This is a time of uneasy reflection, an awareness of how the lens of each person we care for is shaped by both their grief and joy.

The visual and visceral representation that stays with me is of a rough and jagged stone, as a passage is shattered through it, sharp tears that only become less jagged as the hole become larger, and some of the edges soften. Sanded or worn with time and forces both natural and those irrational. Sometimes I dare to see it as a melting shard of ice, but that transient passage is not what we observe and experience.

It is a passage that travels with us as a constant, no matter where we seek to distract our inner metronome. It visits memorials to others, endless vistas of sky and stone, often places of great and astounding beauty. Grief and love keeps one human in face of fierce winds and howling silences.

There is no outrunning this. It is the wind that we feel on our face and our back. It is the unspoken companion to our most true and honest thoughts.