In the throes of introspection . . . .

I've been pondering grief lately, as a message from my mother stirred memories of a friend of mine who died a few years ago. The following is a quote from one of Wendell Berry's Sabbaths poems:

And yet we all are gathered
in this leftover love,
this longing become the measure
of a joy all mourners know.
An old man's mind is a graveyard
where the dead arise.

As the sun rose over the Atlantic this past weekend, I allowed myself to remember him. Running along the shoreline, we felt the sand beneath our bare feet, and we laughed as we made fun of each other's beach-running capability.

And then I cried.