On the night flight back to London, I performed what seemed to me to be the extraordinary feat of shedding tears throughout the full six hours, even during the shallow sleep I kept snapping out of. In leaving home, I did what I did for love. Those stupendous sweethearts sacrificed empires, but they were certain that love, the primary value, was being exalted even in their defeats and their suicides. I envy them the flourish. We who absent ourselves from the daily company of our children must reckon it differently.
Love comes out of it with gains but also with losses.
And whenever death is losing, the force of death makes gains. This is universal. And this is why your heart feels gangrenous inside your chest. He knew I was now absorbing the truth and the force of this. And he knew also that the process could not be softened or hastened.