Rivers that feed our sea of souls

“Loving our not loving should be like coffee or tea; people should be allowed to decide. How else are we to get over all our dead and the women we’ve lost?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t.”

“You think so? Not get over it, but… then? What then? What task do the departed want us to do?”

That was the question that Jean Perdu had been unable to answer for all these years.

Until now. Now he knew.

“To carry them within us—that is our task. We carry them all inside us, all our dead and shattered loves. Only they make us whole. If we begin to forget or cast aside those we’ve lost, then…then we are no longer present either.”

Jean looked at the Allier River, glittering in the moonlight.

“All the love, all the dead, all the people we’ve known. They are the rivers that feed our sea of souls. If we refuse to remember them, that sea will dry up too.”

He felt an overwhelming inner thirst to seize life with both hands before time sped past even faster. He didn’t want to die of thirst; he wanted to be as wide and free as the see—full and deep. He longed for friends. He wanted to love….”

From: The Little Paris Bookshop: A Novel, by Nina George, pages 190-191.