Searching for Solid Ground

To the extent that a parent secures a child's well being that child is privileged to know one of the great lessons of loss. I suppose I had always imagined that when either my father or mother died a good part of the universe would crumble. These are the instincts of the child. The instinct is no less intense in the adult son or daughter, although one might use the language of grief to explain one's expectation. The world should be shaken by such a loss.

I watched myself, and my family, and the universe when my father died. The disturbances at the center were infinite, but the energy did not carry very far. The world did not crumble, nor even shake for more than a second or two. It was as if we laid our line of geophones across vacuous space; after the original concussion nothing registered down the line. Such is the conductivity of a vacuum.

One reworks the equations after seeing this. After death. I did. My estimations of my father did not change; they have only increased as the years have passed. But I have come to think much less of this world.