The Fabric of Existence

A cloth is not a pile of threads. It is threads crossing threads, each holding the others in place. Pull one out and the cloth does not vanish. The weave around the gap loosens, the pattern shifts, and for a while you can see exactly where the thread used to run. That is what a strained or lost connection does. It does not take away who you are. It disturbs two pictures at once: the one of what could be, and the one of what is gone.

We live and thrive in meaningful connections with each other. When those connections are strained or lost, it disrupts our notion of what could be or what is gone. Regardless of how integral we are to each other’s lives, we are still here. In life, afterlife, and memories, surrounded by our own perceptions. Our own fabric of existence.

Regardless of how integral we are to each other’s lives, we are still here. That was the sentence I wrote for myself, not as consolation but as ground to stand on. The people we lose, to distance, to difference, to time, do not take us with them. We remain, and so do they, in the only places a person can remain: in the life still being lived, in whatever comes after it, and in memory.

The last line is the one I understand better now: surrounded by our own perceptions. The fabric is not out there, the same for everyone. Each of us weaves our own from the same threads. Someone who has left my life is, in my cloth, a color I still wear. In someone else’s, the same person is a different color altogether. Neither is wrong. That is what makes it ours.

I keep the page because it was written in the middle of things, not after them. It does not resolve anything. It only holds the threads together long enough to see that they are still a cloth.