Photograph and digital magic: HJ McEnroe
Sometimes, the loudest echo is the one you can't hear.
Live long enough, and you will know loss: not of the sort that our popular culture likes to elevate (celebrities, politicians, and the like). Rather, the kind that comes from losing someone closer than you realized; the kind for which we wear a mask, to hide our vulnerability. That loss leaves scars no one can see; thought disruptions that go barely noticed. But they are real, and the pain that we masquerade to avoid detecting a heart wound leaves us, nonetheless...with broken hearts.
Thus, it isn't just the emptiness of space around us that is so disruptive; it is the lethal knowledge that we have unfinished business -- words left unsaid, emotions unexpressed, desires unfulfilled. And so, they shall remain. That is the loudest echo of all.
Peace. Shalom.