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Measuring Pain

I read this Emily Dickinson poem time and again. As we grow older, the sadness from losses of various sorts accumulate - layer upon layer, fold upon fold. Some old wounds are buried by new, others open up when we thought they had long healed. You also meet others your age and older with complex life experiences many much harder than your own. 

That gives perspective and like Dickinson you may want to measure and sometimes the other's pain feels unfathomable. In this tine's reading, these lines were the most poignant. It brought to mind the unbearable loss a very dear friend suffered - that of a child and how after twenty years the wounds are still tender to touch. 

I wonder if it hurts to live,

  And if they have to try,         10

And whether, could they choose between,

  They would not rather die.

  

I wonder if when years have piled—

  Some thousands—on the cause

Of early hurt, if such a lapse         15

  Could give them any pause;

  

Or would they go on aching still

  Through centuries above,

Enlightened to a larger pain

  By contrast with the love

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