I have been thinking about death lately, and then I stumbled on an old post of mine on “Death and Dying” with this line from Norman Cousins: “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.”

What dies inside me is not always the big stuff. It is often the quiet things: curiosity, courage, tenderness, and the habit of noticing small joys. Sometimes faith. Sometimes trust. Sometimes just the willingness to try again.

Grief can do that to me. So can my chronic ailments or a long season of stress. I keep moving, do the errands, show up. But the inner lights dim. Numb helps for a while. Stay there too long, and parts of me forget the way back.

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I’ve heard it said, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” People say Queen Elizabeth II said it. Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is the words are true.

When I first heard it, I thought, that sounds harsh. Like love is some cruel deal, happiness traded for pain. But it’s not that. It’s just the truth no one wants to face.

Because when we love, we don’t think about the end. We laugh, we sit at the table together, we hold our kids close. We don’t stop and say, one day this will be gone. We can’t. We just live. And then, when loss comes, that’s when we realize. This is the cost.

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It feels like just yesterday, though many years have passed, that I first shared this deeply personal story. But with the arrival of another Easter Sunday, a day so profoundly special, the memory surfaces with a familiar poignancy.

“If I die, Mama, will I be alive again?” Luijoe asked. My six-year-old boy lay nestled amongst a small mountain of prayer books he’d arranged on his little tummy, idly flipping through the pages.

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