Growing-up

Someone I love very much just told me that "the worst thing of growing-up is that we start experiencing death"... I had never thought of it, but it is true. When we are children, we are protected, kept away from death; when we grow-up, however, nobody protects us anymore: we have to face death in the eyes... and be strong.

Bob Dylan once wrote a song called "Death Is Not The End". I don't know - and I don't even feel like knowing - what he was trying to say with those lyrics. For believers, this might have a spiritual meaning, remembering them about life after death; for me, it is kind of obvious: having seen the pain and the suffering in the eyes of so many people left alone by the sudden departure of someone they loved, it is impossible to believe death to be the end.

No, death is not the end; death is absence. Deep and overwhelming absence.