Goodnight, Beautiful Mystery

"So it goes." This is Billy Pilgrim’s way of accepting the passing of all things into death within the pages of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five. Three simple words that signify the release of existence into the vast void of nothingness. It is a beautiful method of looking at loss; inevitable, simple, and peaceful. It makes dying a graceful action, like a cowboy’s last, slow saunter into the sunset. I have dead friends, dead family, dead pets, dead neighbors, dead bottles of champagne. I can let them go with a smile, knowing that I’ll remember them in the best ways I know how. But when love dies, it doesn’t simply cease to exist. It burns a path all the way back to the beginning and leaves a crosshatch of scars over your heart. So it goes.