H is for... Hemingway... n ... Happy

 

Hemingway had written somewhere – if two people love each other, there can be no happy ending to it. I think it was in Death in the Afternoon, I’m not sure where I first came across it. It’s been on my mind all day today, ever since the news of the death broke, here around 2 p.m. Death in the afternoon. Though to be perfectly accurate, it actually happened in the morning.

 

I am not a follower or fan of any one of them. I do have an inexplicable interest in Henry VIII and his first two wives and Tudors generally, but modern kings and queens don’t really grab me all that much. But still. Who can remain unmoved at the ending of a love story of 73+ years? You'd have to be absolutely stony hearted not to feel for the bereaved, never mind how old HRH was or how expected the ending. I know from experience that no matter the predictability of the end, when it happens it is  still a huge shock to the system.

More than the natural empathy one feels as a spouse, however, there is a heightened sense of things coming to a close. A vague panic-cum-sadness at the recognition of an inexorable change of guard that's occurring. The WWII generations and the Partition memory keepers are going, mostly gone. Gone from my own tiny private sphere certainly. And so too from the wider global arena. With every death, a whole host of stories also die. The past becomes more difficult to access. It's unsettling - hard to wrap one's head around. I'd thought I would write about the history of hourglasses and timekeeping and all that, but I'm not feeling sorted enough for that.  

A-Z Challenge 2021