Death arrives like a fright, wakes memories and warns of finitude. Like clumsy steps in a pool of water, it brings invisible sediment to the surface, makes vulnerabilities tangible, in each of their dimensions.

When a friend goes, after denial, the interruption happens and feels like a razor cut. If it is someone with whom we shared immense territories of our thinking and the flame of dreams and ideals, the pain is thin as crystal and continues, an unbroken line, through days and nights. Without interruption.

Even when, in the contamination of thought that presumes eternal life, we treat time with the casualness of infinite stocks, we go on without giving meetings the necessary weight. Death comes to remind us that no! No! The last time, the last hug, the last standing conversation at the ear: we could have stretched it more... We could have.

It happens that when a friend goes, one who housed in an experienced body a vibrant child, the light of the world flickers for a while.

And nature here in my corner did turn gray. And cold. From a tightness in the heart to a hitch in breathing, I go and find long conversations among the things I have kept. Some from a while ago, others from just the other day. And I listen to them, like a child. I repeat and repeat them in my memory. To record deeply the integrity of your being in the world.

I share with you, reader, the strangeness that is the pain caused by the death of a friend. Vitor, dear friend, I will borrow from Milton Nascimento the poetry to adorn our goodbye. And it is certain that our gazes will cross in some dimension, with the understanding of sister souls.

The song I chose is “Sentinela” (“Sentinel”), by Milton Nascimento. I will not reproduce its lyrics here; it is worth listening to, and reading, from an authorized source.