words | "lose"

"Often he'd couch it in historical anecdote, or pepper his conversation with apt examples, but the gist was: Lose. Lose early. lose often. For it's how you lose that counts. And you will lose. Your hair, your looks, your teeth, your body fluids and fecal matter; you will lose friends, your memory, and if you're one of the elite few, who expect to be remembered, give it time: Eventually, the world will lose it memory of you, too."
- from "The Heights" by Peter Hedges

Sometimes when I'm reading a book I get stuck on a phrase or paragraph that I can't stop thinking about. A string of words, the perfect use of comas and/or colons (God, I love colons although semi-colons confound me) that just nails it. Peter Hedges above take on loss comes just about as close to the bone as anything I've read lately. I'm about as comfortable with loss as a person can reasonably expect to be. I've experienced it profoundly and casually and will again and again. I've also had innumerable moments of appreciating my lack of loss and spend a majority of my free time polishing every single silver lining I can get my hands on.