“death is nothing at all. i have only slipped away into the next room. i am i, and you are you. whatever we were to each other, that we still are. call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way you always used to. put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. play, smile, think of me, pray for me. let my name be ever the household word that it always was, let it be spoken without effort, no trace of a shadow on it. life means all that it ever meant. it is the same as it ever was. there is unbroken continuity. why should i be out of mind because i am out of sight? i am waiting for you, somewhere very near. just around the corner. all is well.”
Our hands contain our humanness. Sometimes they give us away. They clasp a chair while we pretend not to be scared. They sweat from the palms while we beg our foreheads to stay dry. They also hold. They pray. They dance along the keys of a piano. They tickle. They dust themselves in flour. They shape bread. They scratch the back of a lover. We hide so much in this life, but I don’t know if it is possible to hide the way a hand can open and close itself out of care or loss or love.
