Letter from and to my brother

My brother wrote me a letter about two friends of his who'd just died and how death made him feel now that people he'd loved all his life were beginning to die all around him.

It wasn't like he was looking for me to say something, he was only sharing some news about people he loved who were no longer in the world and how their absence made him feel about himself.

I being me had to say something so I wrote him a letter saying that death is the one thing in life about which you really have to do your own thinking.

I know good intelligent people who don't think at all about death, they only think about life, and I know equally good intelligent people who mainly think about death, their own death and others.

I remember reading about the French writer who was more amused by the fact that there was such a thing as a death certificate in France than he was that there was a birth certificate, though he was amused by that as well, and thinking when I read this that here was a thinker I could admire though by the time I read this he was dead.

I wanted to say to my brother, what else is there to think about other than life or death? But I forget to say this to him and by the time I remembered the letter I'd written had already been sent.

I know what I'll miss about life is the light, especially the autumn light, as I know there's no light in death.