We cannot let go of the dying.  It’s in our nature, I suppose.  We’re constantly craving stability, same-ness.  As such, we cling to the dying as if they were pieces of a tattered blanket, somehow trying to put it back together with needle and thread, knowing that the effort is futile and there will come a point where nothing can be done.  You can’t forever repair a broken body.

Instead, we should dissect those tatters, thread-by-thread, keeping the meaningful ones…the laughs, the joys, sometimes the tears, and weave them into a tapestry of our own.  Those threads are part of our story now; they have changed us, and we forever bear their marks.

All that remains should be burned…fights, sadness, betrayals, disappointments.  Yes, we are indelibly marked by those as well, but we should let them be mere flecks, tiny imperfections, remembered, acknowledged, and then let go to scatter on the wind like ashes from a dying fire.

We can try to hold the tatters, but such attempts would be in vain.  The soul slips away, the body withers, and like the husk of a cicada, remains as an empty shell, tattered remnants.

What we do with those tatters is up to us.