The light that got lost

John's funeral was today. It was hard to let go of my friend, and I definitely feel as though there is a big hole where his presence used to be, as though something important was lost.

“The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water.” - Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit, in a Field Guide to Getting Lost, says light at the blue end of the spectrum gets most “lost”, most scattered. But “the light that gets lost gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.”

I was thinking of this as I recalled the holes left in my and my friends’ lives with the passing of our friend this past week. All of us feel it acutely, we realize something is missing, in ourselves, in our friendships, in our workplace. It’s hard to say how these holes will change us, what has been lost.

But I also noticed some new things. At the funeral I heard “I didn’t know Steve was such a good speaker.” I heard “I didn’t know John was such a doting father, that he and Steve’s daughter were so close.” I heard “I didn’t know Steve’s wife was so wonderful.” It was as if by John’s absence we were able to finally see some of these things, make these connections. I thought about how the loss of John gave us some beautiful things to discover just as Solnit’s blue light gives us the beauty of the world.