Lucentum

I try to find, in names such as Lucentum or Al-Laqant, some clue that might explain the contrast—or perhaps some trace linking names so closely associated with light to the slow erosion caused by an enduring sense of loss.

It is difficult to reconcile this with such a white and luminous city, crowned by so perfect a castle upon so clear and open a hill.

Is it a paradox? Perhaps.

Or perhaps it is simply another expression of the duality that accompanies the human experience: the permanent coexistence of beauty and pain, of what endures and what inevitably fades away.

The reflection is convincing in theory. And yet, in this time and in this place, what I perceive each day is how, one by one, the roots that bound us to such familiar ground are being loosened—the roots that connected us to an idea of home so intimate and personal that, for so many years, it seemed immune to and untouched by the tick-tock of life. A home built upon our own rituals, our affections, our shared stories and our family films.

A world in which the years were arranged around school terms and summers, and where worries had the gentle proportions of childhood. A large family which, precisely because it was large, formed a complete universe—always self-contained and self-sufficient.

With the passing of time, that sense of permanence gradually fades. What once seemed solid begins to dissolve slowly, like sand in an hourglass that never stops. And with it comes the realization that those years which seemed ordinary were, in fact, extraordinary.

That yesterday has become a present in which one must learn, little by little, to say goodbye to the dreams, the strength and the seasons of those who came before us. A farewell that anticipates others, because this is how life unfolds: through the gradual shedding of what once appeared solid.

Perhaps the true loss is not only the loss of the people we love, but also the loss of that inner place we inhabited alongside them—a place we had imagined, without realizing it, would remain forever.

CFC