With this in mind I would like to share some thoughts on a recent event. Today I attended a memorial service for somebody I had only known for eight months. This person was a work colleague who passed away a week ago after a long struggle with cancer. Although the news of his death was a shock, I didn't expect it to affect me to the same extent as his other colleagues who had known him for 20 or so years.
However, I was affected greatly, and not for just the usual reasons. I knew it wasn't only grieve, as a family, friend or long time colleague might feel, although there was a sadness. It wasn't just because his passing was a poignant reminder of our mortality, and of another life lost to cancer, although it undoubtedly serves that purpose. It was, I eventually realized, the impossibility of knowing him that bothered me the most. I had interacted with him just long enough to get a sense of the kind of person he was, the kind of person I wanted to get to know more. His passing, however, made that impossible. I would never get to know the man that others had admired for so long.
This is the eternal struggle that we are in; trying to make sense of reason and emotion, hopefully while holding on to both.
