Life, if selfhood, if identity, is a primary loss: the loss of unity with all other. Love is the dance between confirmation and dissolution of that primary loss. Love is the condition of all secondary losses.

Loss and love are life’s long lessons, however long a life. If life is loss, is love, is loss… then living well is loving well and losing well. And this is as true at life’s end as at any other time, if not more true. The last loss, after all, undoes the first.