“All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be.

It was the nature of things.

Though on the surface it seemed every person was different, this was not true.

At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end.

We must try to see one another this way.

As suffering, limited beings --

Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces.

His sympathy extended to all in this instant, blundering, in its strict logic, across all divides.

He was leaving here broken, awed, humbled, diminished.

Ready to believe anything of this world.

Made less rigidly himself through his loss.

Therefore quite powerful.

Reduced, ruined, remade.

Merciful, patient, dazzled.”