The Deception of the Shard: Notes from the Floor

​Leonardo da Vinci once wrote, “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” Right now, I am living in the heart of that deception.
​My kiln has been opened, and the reality is stark: a piece of my life—my mother—has been broken beyond repair. Victor Hugo captured this weight when he said, “The internal void is the presence of the absent.” That void isn’t just an empty space; it’s a heavy, crushing gravity. The pieces of me that remain are fired, permanent, and terrifyingly fragile. In this state, my “opinions” have become my own worst enemies. I suffer from the opinion that I could have done something different—that the hands that gave her the medicine prescribed by her doctors should have somehow been able to hold back the inevitable. I know, intellectually, that I am not responsible for the timing of a life’s end. I know the doctors gave the orders. But as I stand over these shards, I am learning that knowing a truth and accepting it are two different zip codes. The deception is the voice that tells me I failed, when the truth is simply that she is gone.
​To be broken is to be dangerously vulnerable. When I am covered in cracks, the world feels loud. I recently dreamed that my partner was changing the bathroom countertops—tearing out the old and replacing it with something new and sturdy. In the dream, there was a sense of progress, a hope that the person I love would take the lead in stabilizing our world while I am too brittle to move. It was a vision of a “sturdier” surface to lean on.
​Yet, in my waking hours, the deception returns. I find myself arguing over those very “countertops”—the small, inconsequential details of our daily life—because it is easier to fight about a surface than to admit that my very foundation is trembling. I am susceptible to the lie that every word from my partner is a critique of my strength, rather than a hand reaching out to steady the pot. Aristotle defined a friend as “a single soul dwelling in two bodies,” but when I am in pain, I trick myself into thinking those two bodies are at war.
​I risk weakening the very support system I need. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 reminds us: “Two are better than one… For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.” I have someone there to lift me, yet the “hot coal” of my grief burns so bright I almost want to drop it on the only person standing by me. Buddha warned, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” I am burning yet I feel like the one turning a supportive partner into an adversary because I am afraid of how much I need them.
​I need this season to mourn. I need to accept that “to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die,” as Thomas Campbell wrote, and find a way to hold my mother close without letting the weight of her absence shatter what’s left of my present. Nietzsche noted that “he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” My “why” right now is the slow, agonizing process of rebuilding.
​I want to help others understand this grief, just as I try to understand the fires you have walked through. “Compassion is the basis of morality,” Schopenhauer said, and that compassion must extend to ourselves first. I have to forgive myself for not being a doctor, for not being a god, and for being a man who is currently cracked.
​If I can move toward the philosophy of Kintsugi—treating my breakage and repair as a history to be honored with gold, rather than a disaster to be hidden—I can eventually be a steady set of hands for other again. Hemingway wrote that “the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” I am not strong yet. I am still in the “broken” part of that sentence.
​I’m not looking for the “before” version of myself anymore. That vessel was fired and it was beautiful, but it is gone. I am looking for the version that emerges from the dust—cracked, repaired, and held up by the hands I was too proud to rely on yesterday.