If we have ever loved a pet or human, we know this to be true. That even after they are gone from this physical realm, they live on in our hearts. If you were to Google quotes about love and life you should be prepared to go down a chasmic rabbit hole, only to emerge weeks later with one great truth- stated a thousand different ways in a myriad of languages, cultures and religions…

“To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.”

Sydney Smith, in Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), “Of Friendship”

And if ever there was a poignant pregnant line spoken by a character and lived for too short a time by the actor who played him, it is this one.

“Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society

In the first line of her poem, Dickinson likened love to immortality and I have done the same with my poem, while exploring the quality of a life without love, or as in Robin Williams’s case, a life so clouded by depression that one is rendered unable to sustain him/herself. We can survive for a time on all the other things, the scraps, like wealth, recognition, applause, etc., but on the table of life the main dish is love and if we don’t get to partake in and share that, no amount of those other things will ever satiate our souls.