You almost wish that you could have all that bad stuff back/ So that you could have the good

Every summer I re-read Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light. And every summer I just sob. This is such a beautiful and sad book. I read it at a particularly critical time in my life, but it's not lost any of its power to really cut through everything and leave me with a renewed sense of hope despite everything.

The novel is mainly about death and loss, but it is also about time and love, and how the four interweave. Loss permeates the novel in such wrenching, constant ways, but there is still an immeasurable sense of hope. L'Engle references both a ring of endless light and a deep but dazzling darkness; perhaps the one cannot exist without the other. Love ultimately is loss.

The part that really gets to me and always hits me anew is the scene when the main character and her younger brother talk about death and heaven. The topic is difficult enough, though his idea about heaven is wrenchingly exquisite. What really always gets to me, though, is the main character's realization that her brother is growing up and is no longer really a child. Her sense of loss at this inevitable change is subtle, but certainly present; it's not that she wants him to stay young, but that she just sees the loss that comes as inevitably as the passage of time.

When I first read this, I was about the age of the protagonist, and this just hit so close to home. It still really does. There is comfort in her words: "and nothing loved is ever lost," and truth in “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”