My heart shattered, broken into millions of pieces,
The day you died.
And because there was nothing else to do,
I let those shattered pieces land softly in the world.
And when I could, again, breathe,with a regular rhythm,
I noticed - quietly, painfully- the places
where splintered shards of my heart came to a rest.
Somewhere amidst the fragments of your too-brief-life,
reflecting ineluctable grief,
I know that your love is, by comparison,
so much more vast and infinite than my shattering.
-Joanne Cacciatore
The concept of ongoing bonds with our dead has been around, and has been debated, for millennia. The idea that we are connected to those we love who are living, even when vast time and space stand between us, is slightly less controversial.
The potentiality of their intersection can be found in two related fields: spirituality and physics.
Quantum entanglement (QE), also referred to euphemistically as 'spooky action at a distance', is a real thing. Ask Sagan, Einstein, Tesla, or Oppenheimer, and they may respond curiously. Well, only, they are already dead...and they haven't seen three loopholes in quantum theory closed: and now, it's accepted in all its veracity. It. Is. Real.
Here's how it works: Two or more related objects, despite spatial distance, can communicate with each other instantaneously, much faster than even the speed of light. These particles are often found to link their states in an inexplicable synchronicity. One study in Vienna confirmed Einstein's earlier findings about QE: linked particles 89 miles apart behave in the same way. Despite the distance, they are able to connect at faster than light speed. Even if hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of miles apart, there exists a mystical subatomic resonance in connected particles.
And yet, I realize that physical separation from our Beloved is excruciatingly painful, potent, and perhaps more complicated than I can understand.
I believe in quantum theory's relevance with my child who died.
This deep love is as mysteriously simple - yet complex- as quantum entanglement. This invisible thread that links our hearts cannot be severed by any force. Our union has been sealed.
Her particles are part of me. My particles are part of her. We are one in the same, connected subatomically, in the visible and invisible realm. We are quantumatically entangled forevermore. Every moment of my life, she can feel my love. Every moment of my life, she can sense my eternal longing. Every moment of my life, she can read the love letters I've written to her since she came into existence as I have read the love letters she has sent to me by the wind and rain, the sun and moon.
And this is the best use of quantum entanglement that I can imagine.
Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters
sent by the wind and rain,
the snow and moon.
~ Ikkyū 休宗純