I never know what to tell someone who is grieving from the loss of a loved one. How do you make someone feel better when someone they love has died.

No words seem appropriate, no words seem to do the trick. It is almost hopeless at that time. I just don't know what to say... except that I know how it feels, because I lost someone to death as well, heck, I almost lost myself to it once. But that doesn't make the pain any less.

Death is the eternal break up. We fight and we argue and we quarrel and we are bitter, and we hold grudges for years and years, and then suddenly it's all over. And there is nothing we can do about it. Death doesn't consider if someone loves you and they don't want you to go. It doesn't care if you have a million things to do before you are ready. It just takes, until nothing is left. That's probably the most helpless we can be in this world.

But what's amazing is that how easy it is to forget. How easy it is to completely dismiss the idea that any one of the people we hold so dear to us could be gone in the next second. How we can so quickly and eternally lose someone to something so trivial as a heart attack, a traffic accident, a senseless shooting, or even a suicide. To breathe, and not know it is your last.

The last time I saw him was in October five years ago. We sat on my favorite bench, but we weren't making any good memories. He was there to tell me what he had decided. He was there to tell me that he chose her over me, and that was it. He didn’t give me a chance to ask any questions or to get any closure. He didn’t give me a chance to cry and yell at him. He just walked right out.

The next time I saw him was five years later at a funeral. Our paths would have never crossed again if it weren't for the death of someone we both knew. Funerals have a way of bringing everyone together. They expect that we put everything else behind us and just get along even if it is for only that day. So I did that. I got along just fine with everyone, including him. I knew he was more devastated than I was from this loss, and I couldn’t help but feel sadder for him than I did for losing a friend. When we looked at each other, I could tell that he was surprised to see me there. Perhaps he didn’t think I would actually come, or perhaps he just didn't think about me at all. But once he saw me, he couldn't stop looking at me. So I walked up to him. We shared a few words about our loss. We tried to console each other, but we couldn’t really. How do you get over someone’s passing? You can’t really. You just learn to live with it.

We are wired to cry and feel sad, and regret many thing we have done when someone we know dies. We cry for someone who is no longer with us, and quite possibly is in a much better place than most of us. We cry when that someone has found their peace, when someone has lived and seen, and is now finally resting. We have a hard time letting that go, but we don’t ever care to shed a tear for the living. We kill something inside each other everyday, and we don’t mourn that loss. There are ways of dieing that don't end in funerals. Hearts break, lives change, even completely destroyed, and we don’t even shrug.

It doesn't matter if he feels sad, or guilty, or even if he apologizes. It's all done now. I died then, and he can't bring me back to life for himself again. I can't unfeel what I have felt.

I suppose he'll just have to come and cry at my funeral too.

Many read this book growing up. The rest has seen the movie. [If you haven't, please go read it, then watch it.]  Some are swaying to its soundtrack these days. I did all of these.

The beauty of the character Jay Gatsby is that he can be interpreted in many ways. Yet, most of us choose to marvel at the intensity of Gatsby's love for Daisy. He dedicated his whole life, his whole existence to the quest of finding her love - to attaining her. He knew on some level that she did not love him, but he did not want to believe it. If only she would leave her husband, if only they could go back to the past, everything would be just okay. He would be happy again. He would be with Daisy.

We like to live in the past.  If only we could change a few details from our past, we could fix everything. We could be happy again.  But the sad truth is, you can't be happy by yearning for the past because you are yearning for something that does not exist. It's foolishness. It becomes an obsession. Gatsby was border-lined obsessed with the idea of being with Daisy.  He turned his whole life into such a perfect fraud that he even fooled himself. He forgot about love. He forgot about his real  life, or what he could have gotten out of it for the sake of attaining an idea from the past that ceased to exist. Perhaps it never even existed then. If it did, Daisy would have waited for him when she could.

I cannot possibly have respect for anyone like that. No obsessed man ever loved. No obsessed man ever attained his obsession and was happy, and I think that is precisely what Fitzgerald wanted to convey through Gatsby. He wants us to remember the fine line between love and obsession, and the consequences of crossing over.  The "Great" in The Great Gatsby is so ironic.

I want to think of him as a great person, but the more I think about it, the more I can't. He is not great. Fitzgerald's character is great, the way it is written. But if Jay Gatsby was a person, he would not be great.

In a world which is increasingly becoming lonely and miserable, we don't need more Gatsbys. Please don't be a Gatsby. There is no nobility in obsessing over something that does not exist. Desire leaves us heartbroken, it wears us out. Desires can wreck your life.  You deserve to be happy. You deserve a better life than Gatsby's.

Do you think there comes a point where the pain just stops? Or is it never-ending?

Isn’t there a point when you no longer care because you know that it could not possibly hurt anymore? The pain is absolved and the fear is gone because there is nothing left of your soul to be ripped apart. When it happens you sit on the floor, your back to the door, and just stare at the wall. Somehow the emptiness is comforting then. You don’t want to stand up because you know exactly what is waiting for you on the other side of the door. Some people tell me that they see the darkness begin to rise from the floor. They can no longer fight off the darkness. Hence they welcome it inside them.

The light goes out, the soul extinguishes and the pain disappears.

Is that how the pain disappears?