Notable Quote: Anything You Can Lose in a Shipwreck

I soon realize there is something else here besides grief, and it is so surprising that I keep turning away from it because the impending death of someone you love is not supposed to feel like this. In addition to my usual thrashing, I am aware of an unchanged and unchangeable stillness, a peacefulness so languid and so relaxing that it feels like being dissolved, cell by cell. The difference between how I think death should feel and how it does feel is like the difference between being knocked around on the surface of the ocean and gliding along the dark, hushed bottom, where the surface is only a dream.

When I pay attention to what I am losing, I feel insane with grief. When I pay attention to the enveloping stillness, I know that nothing bad is happening.

It makes me wonder if what the Sufis have said for a thousand years is actually true: anything you can lose in a shipwreck is not really yours.

~ Geneen Roth, The Craggy Hole in My Heart & The Cat Who Fixed It