The Big One...

 Death. Yes. It's complicated. The Death card was pulled by a couple folks we know this weekend. It is one of the key trump cards in the Tarot. Think of a certain transformation. What does it really mean? Who knows? A person you knew, no longer is, except in your memories, your heart, your soul, your being.  A life over. It is a tough thing, no matter who, no matter how, no matter when. An untimely death. Really, it feels like it's always untimely. There are the accidents, the diseases, the suicides, the slow-motion suicides, the misadventures, the murders most foul, the wrong place/the wrong time calamities, all the sad tragedies great and small.  Human Beings have invented Religions, erected monuments, written histories, all trying to grapple with and digest the experience of death. I think of that Dylan song, "Death is Not the End." Wishful Thinking writ large? Who knows. Death comes knocking on the door, and it seems so final, so definitive, a reality so hard and unmovable, completely, irrevocable. You try to imagine an escape hatch, a path forward, a glimmer of light, but really, it's not an easy thing. I think of  The Fool, that other trump card in the  tarot. The happy, clueless Fool: "a young man stands on a cliff without a care in the world." A foolish wisdom? Hah. Maybe best to turn to silence, sadness, tears. You live with a deep sense of loss, and a bottomless well of emotional turbulence. That's Death in a nutshell.