A Life Poem

Due to a recent death in our family, my daughter has started asking questions about death it's not because she has been exposed to something she should not have been to her curiosity is a mix of fear and uncertainty. both are very fundamental I want to talk to her before anyone else does and tell her it's inevitable I'll sugarcoat it a bit, make it more sweet and bearable, given her fragile and sensitive psyche sweetie, I don't know why we have to lose our loved ones and eventually have to leap into oblivion ourselves humanity has come up with everything to numb the difficult question of death we have art and nature, sunsets and sunrises, fridays and long weekends, friends and family we have love that helps make both losing and living a courageous act we have sex and ice cream, cigarettes and black coffee, music and poetry, ice hockey, ultra marathons and mount climbing to forget our mortality for the time being baby, you have a life ahead to experience life and beauty, seasons and long summer evenings, love and heartbreaks, true kindness and compassion, we have news agencies and politics, dictators and red buttons, nuclear warheads, aircrafts and spaceships, AI agents and money all to forget our misery and mortality for the time being we have natural disasters, earthquakes and tsunamis, wars and organized crime, we have terminal cancer and diabetes and clinical depression to remind us that we're mortal and powerless and vulnerable our existence is merely fragile you need to come up with your own solution, with your own pill and painkiller, you need to fabricate your own illusion, I can't do that for you you need to let it go and enjoy life for the time being as I did years ago when I woke up fearful and trembling and my shrink gave me a pill from a Neruda poem life is so beautiful only because it's so temporary death has 100% certainty and always finds us whenever we are one day not now