“Each time Someone Dies, a Library Burns.”

Recently I was struck by this quote from The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson:

All her knowledge is gone now. Everything she ever learned, or heard, or saw. Her particular way of looking at Hamlet or daisies or thinking about love, all her private intricate thoughts, her inconsequential secret musings – they’re gone too. I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I’m watching it burn right to the ground.

Oof. (Do you need a minute after reading that? ‘Cause I definitely need a minute.)

This is one of the aspects of grief that I don’t think we’re often prepared for - the way that the library burns. When we lose someone, we expect to lose the opportunity to see them, to touch them, and to speak to them (at least in this world). We may be less prepared to lose all of the things that made them who they are: their stories and perspective, their history and their dreams, their idiosyncrasies and opinions, the unique lens through which they saw the world.

One of the hardest parts of grief for me is knowing that I can never save and capture all of it. There are, inevitably, pieces that will slip through and fall away. It can become grief upon grief, realizing that there are books from the library I might never be able to save, and others that I never cracked open that will forever remain unread.

I don’t have any tidy reflections on this; it is one of the ways that loss can hit hard. And yet, I know that acknowledgement can be everything, and so I acknowledge it here: the pieces we can keep and hold close, the pieces that slip away, and the ways we take care of ourselves and each other through it all.

What are the pieces of your loved ones that you treasure and keep? What are the burned books of their library that feel lost or remain unread? And what is one way you can resurrect a piece of your loved one’s library and hold it close? What might it look and feel like to do that today?

As always, take gentle care of yourself.