How does it feel to lose someone close to you?

Death is life affirming.
The loss of a singular life means the person has been immortalised.
Their life was written and cannot be unwritten, with life comes control and responsibility over one's actions and reputation. In death these things are no longer in their hands, and the person, though non-existent, has now been completed and cannot be changed or made complete. The living are becoming the person they are and will be, shifting constantly. In a state of flux. The dead can only be.

You can tie a balloon round your wrist and keep it close, and the string could come loose without you noticing. The balloon floats up in the sky without you noticing, until you look down at your wrist. You look up and see your balloon in the sky. If you stay to watch it, tiny, up there, you'll notice it doesn't look like it's getting any further away. If you move on, your memories of your balloon will be good. You can only remember it as complete, and it made you happy. You still have the string round your wrist and the images in your mind's eye. Be thankful you ever had the balloon at all.

When I see a balloon floating above a city in a blue summer sky, I smile. It makes me think of freedom, and innocence, transcending the dirty surroundings from where it came.

And I know there is a child looking up at the same sight as me, crying for their loss.