Today’s ashes are tomorrow’s soil.

Whatever might be taken from me need not leave me with a deficit in its wake.

Maybe the thing that we’re losing is the very thing that has caused us to lose everything else in the first place.

Loss eventually arrives when something departs. Grief is working through both.

The greatest loss lies in our inability to accept loss.

Countless times, I have imagined A. rising through the rivers of this land, to the surface of Florida to be found again, pulled into the air by new hands. The possibilities are endless, but most often I imagine him found by children. Above him, the sky shimmers and undulates blue through transparent springwater. Then four small brown hands break the surface and pull him into the air and into their excited and frightened vocabularies. The delicate bones of their arms and ribs absorb his voice, shattering their knowledge of what is possible.