To those who read lots of books, you already know the bittersweet feeling of reading the epilogue:
Most times, everything has been solved, all the problems have faded into the past pages, but you as a reader know it’s the end of the book. Those characters you know and love so deeply will be locked inside the book when you close the back cover. You know you can always revisit them by reading the book again, you can always remember how their adventure took place, but for you it won’t ever be the same experience as you had in the first time while for them… well, they are stuck inside a closed story, one that will never change.
The bittersweet comes from the rush of the experience you had coming to a conclusion and the sadness of it being over forever. Of course, finishing a book can lead to reading another book, but it will never bring back that same experience you once had.
Knowing you are living through an epilogue is just as bittersweet as reading one: I saw the final chapter come to an end with worry of how the remaining characters would go on into the epilogue. Turns out everything is solved, and though it wasn’t a happy ending for most parts, at least those many problems have been left behind.
It’s hard to let go of loved ones, specially when they were alive in your hands, but it is needed. In one of my many reflections I said that life is cyclical: made of life, death, and rebirth; and this was a moment that I had to stop and fully feel life fading into death, quite literally if I may say so.
As I’m closing the last pages, I know that death is fading, but rebirth may take a while yet to come. This time between death and rebirth is needed though, as without it we may not truly understand how deeply important life was.
So I am meditating and reflecting on how this cycle has started and ended in my life, how amazing and how tragic it was, how I went from crying tears of joy to tears of sorrow before letting go. I know that in the end everything will be okay, but I need this time in order to see how much I’ve grown and learned during this cycle.
I just hope that one day I may look back upon this epilogue and smile because I was fortunate enough to have lived this experience.
