Day 56: A Broken Looking-Glass

I was interested in this story by the title initially...I had never read anything by Henry Harland before. Wow, is all I have to say. At first I thought it was about a wasted life, an old man who felt that he had failed, that his life was worthless. It was that, but then it took a twist and turned into something more haunting--a love story. Not the creepy, Poe-like haunting love stories...It was something macabre, but also sad, and real. Unlike Poe's stories of death and obsession, this one had possibilities of truth. A man loves a woman who does not love him, and then she falls ill and dies--in this, he feels that he has failed the most, for he feels that if she had married him she would not have died. How connected humans are to each other, how strong is love but also how so very fragile. Man is made to know his emotions to be able to think, but what is love but at first a deep emotion that drives us to feel deeply, so deep that we live as in a dream at first. And then we come back to reality...the life that we have always lived, but with another by our side. How sad and yet so real was this story, because we have all been there; we have all had the clouds of uncertainty and grief hang over us, even if we were caught unawares. Do not let your love die, in the sense that we must have love burn bright in our hearts for our fellow men; trust in God and be believing, and you will make something of yourself for the better, whether married or not.