My Sister’s Mercy

I am ending and beginning, the final breath and first silence. I am Death, and I am not cruel—merely necessary. But my sister, my beautiful, terrible sister Grief... she is the true force of transformation.

I watch her work from the shadows between moments. She moves among humans like slow-growing crystals through stone, reshaping them from the inside out. Where I make clean cuts, she carves canyons. Where I extinguish, she ignites.

Humans fear me, but they don't understand—I am merciful. I come once, swift and certain. A heartbeat, a pause, and it's done. But my sister? She comes like waves against a shoreline, retreating only to return, each time changing the landscape of a soul just a little more.

I remember a woman who fought me as I took her mother. She cursed me, bargained, begged. I did what I must, quick as autumn frost. But Grief—oh, how my sister danced with her after. I watched through winters and summers as Grief taught her daughter the weight of empty chairs, the volume of silence, the taste of tears in morning coffee.

"Sister," I once said, finding her by a hospital window where she watched a grieving family, "why do you torment them so?"

She turned to me, her eyes holding all the world's twilights. "Brother," she replied, "you give them endings. I give them depth. You take their loved ones. I teach them why that matters."

"They hate you for it."

"No," she smiled, touching the glass where a young girl clutched her grandmother's old shawl. "They hate what they think I am. But watch."

And I did. I watched as the girl grew, carrying my sister's lessons in her bones. Where others saw an old shawl, she saw love made tangible. Where others rushed through days, she savored moments like sweet wine. She loved fiercer, laughed harder, lived fuller—because my sister had taught her the true cost of living.

"You see?" Grief whispered. "I don't break them, brother. I expand them. Every loss I bring creates space for more love. Every tear makes room for deeper joy. You end their time; I teach them how to use it."

I am Death, and I understand necessity. But my sister...she understands transformation. Together we keep the balance: I harvest, she plants. I end, she begins. I take, she gives meaning to the taking.

Sometimes, in the spaces between my duties, I watch her work with something like envy. The humans run from both of us, but those who learn to dance with my sister—they are the ones who greet me with dignity when their time comes. They are the ones who understand that both of us, in our own ways, serve life.

"They call me cruel," she told me once, as we watched a sunset together.

"They call me crueler," I replied.

She smiled then, sad and knowing. "Perhaps. But you are the door, brother. I am the path that leads them to it. You show them the end. I teach them how to live until they reach it."

And so we continue, my sister and I. I bring the night, swift and certain. She brings the long dawn, painful and beautiful. Between us, humans learn the full measure of what it means to live.

I am Death, and I come for all. But it is my sister Grief who makes that fact meaningful. It is she who makes them understand why each heartbeat matters. And in this way, perhaps, she is the more powerful of us both.

For I may end lives, but she teaches them how to live.