"Love is my religion - I could die for it" John Keats

And evidently one of my former advisees did last week, by his own hand. Tragic. A beautiful boy, a sensitive soul of thirty years. I'm haunted by his death these days.

I always think at the end of a love affair that I will die (or must die, or should die), but I don't. Perhaps that's my tragedy: I live on. I put one foot in front of the other, I breathe, I take meals, I work, I see friends, I shop, I make plans for the future. My life goes on. I survive. But, truly, a part of me has died forever -- the part of me I shared only with my lover.

But, perhaps, with each ending something is also created? A timeless, transcendent space, a kind of metaphysical empty room full of blinding light? An intimate space that may only be shared with one other human being in all the world? And maybe will be again someday? Or so it seems to me.

"In my father's house there are many mansions." And in some of them dwell those I once loved so much I believed I would die if they ceased to love me. Perhaps one day, outside of time and space, we will love again in those rooms full of white light.