Beyond the End

Two very old and dear friends of mine flew over the western horizon this past month, Paul Lane and Robert Grant.

We will all die. Our bodies will quickly disintegrate. The people who know us and know of us will all die, so every memory of us will die with them. The earth, the planets, and the stars will eventually die. At the very end, the structure of matter itself will come unstrung in cold dark entropy. “Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.” Even the dust itself and the space it occupies will end and there will be absolutely nothing left.

Nothing is forever.

And knowing all that, I wish Paul and Robert could have stayed awhile longer. They left us too soon.
In the face of certain extinction, I believe (perhaps foolishly) that we will all somehow and in some fashion live again, and that we will meet again glorious and unafraid. Until that time, Paul and Robert my friends, I will miss you. Until that time, adieu.

Caspar David Friedrich, Two Men by the Sea at Moonrise, 1817