1. A Beginning of Some Kind
I am meant to be writing a book on death and grief, on bereavement. As it turns out, it is more a book I am meant to be writing than a book I am, in fact, writing. When I try to write it – or write at it – I lay words to page only to then lay waste to those pages. I start, then stop, then start again to stop again. The time for this, I think each time, is just not right. Today, at long belated last, I realized that the time will never be right. Oh, in youth, I could surely have written a book on bereavement and perhaps even offered many a fine thought, my mental diet then robust with classical philosophy – all those unflappably wise-seeming Greeks, those fierce-seeming Roman Stoics, and those tearful, exquisitely mournful Confucians. I could have written something fat with insight harvested from sources old and long found worthwhile. It would have been a confident thing, but not, I think, especially useful. When ...
