grief

FARTHER THAN THE SUN

At my grandfather’s funeral, everyone present sang an old Spanish hymn titled “Más Allá del Sol,” which translates to “farther than the sun.” The lyrics read, “I have a home farther than the sun.”

I don’t know where people go when they die—if they simply cease to exist, or if they go off to some place we don’t know about in this life. I tend to think about death like physics: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just transferred. We’re all made of energy, and when we die, we become some other kind of energy.

While I don’t know who you’ve lost or how you lost them, I do know that we all, at some point, lose people we love. The feeling of missing them changes, but it never really goes away. When I feel the sun on my skin and experience a gentle warmth that can’t be replicated by humans, a powerful reminder we’re still alive, I think of my abuelo off somewhere “más allá del sol.”