I am transfixed by this perfect square of deep blue. It’s possible that no solid object exists between the glass and infinity⁠—that is to say the very edge of the observable universe, which would take 46 billion years to reach, traveling at the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second. And that’s just what we can see. To get fractionally closer I’m raising my bed. I’ve been in one position for so long, I think my foot may have gone on ahead, as I can no longer feel it.

I wonder as I write this sentence if you are alive. And if those we lose come back to the place you’re reading this from. Maybe they are near us all the time and we don’t even know. There’s more evidence for reincarnation than for the existence of god.

Consider for a moment that those we’ve lost do return. I read somewhere that grief is the distillation of memory and desire. But neither memory, nor desire, acknowledged our son Adam before he was conceived. So why do I trust these faculties now? It’s unsettling to think that loving someone depends on our ability to remember them. If the feeling we call love wasn’t reliant on memory, then men who have children they don’t know about would feel their existence in the world.

And so without memory, the conventional definition of love is not possible. Therefore, what we call love is merely a survival mechanism bordering on narcissism⁠—despite the power we ascribe to it.

Let’s play a game.

Imagine that part of my illness means losing my ability to remember now, while I’m alive.

Would I forget my wife? Yes. Adam, too? Certainly⁠—I would lose what little I have of him, even though the event of his life would still have taken place.

And herein lies another reason not to fear dying.

Bear with me now, because it’s more than just a concept or some conceited form of escapism. For even though memory dies, the events⁠—though not remembered⁠—still took place.

Perhaps, then, it is only nature that has a memory of memory.

But what form could a record of what’s forgotten take?

Look around. Better yet, push your hands through the skin of a river; lay down in any field; spread amidst the roots of trees; inhale dusk.

If those we’ve lost return here, we can’t rely on memory to help us recognize them, which means there’s only one thing to do: if you want to keep loving the ones you claim to have lost, you must be willing to love everyone.

Because anybody could be anybody. Even you are not who you think you are, at least in part. Which means even the most seemingly abhorrent creature is worthy of love.

Or no one is, ever.