import Link from 'next/link';
import type { Metadata } from 'next';

export const metadata: Metadata = {
  title: 'Afterword: When A Friend Dies',
  description: 'An essay by Cynthia Trenshaw about grief and the loss of a friend, written for Leo E. Baldwin.',
};

export default function WhenAFriendDiesPage() {
  return (
    <div className="min-h-screen bg-white">
      {/* Header */}
      <header className="mx-auto max-w-3xl px-6 pt-12 pb-8 text-center border-b border-stone-100">
        <p className="text-xs uppercase tracking-[0.3em] text-stone-400 mb-4">Afterword</p>
        <h1 className="font-serif text-4xl md:text-5xl text-stone-800">When A Friend Dies</h1>
        <p className="mt-4 text-stone-500 italic">For Leo E. Baldwin</p>
        <p className="mt-4 text-stone-600">by Cynthia Trenshaw</p>
      </header>

      {/* Essay content */}
      <article className="mx-auto max-w-3xl px-6 py-16">
        <div className="prose prose-stone prose-lg mx-auto">
          <p>
            When a friend dies, we&apos;re startled by our own feelings. Despite all the preparation,
            the long illness, the frequent visits, and the exhaustion of watching death take its
            time, we&apos;re unprepared for the loss. We thought we were ready, but we weren&apos;t.
          </p>

          <p>
            The first thing that surprises us is the silence. Not the absence of their voice—though
            that comes later, like a door closing in another room—but the silence inside ourselves.
            The constant low hum of worry that had become so familiar we didn&apos;t notice it anymore:
            gone. The mental checklist of medications and appointments and symptoms to watch for:
            gone. The weight of carrying another person&apos;s dying: lifted.
          </p>

          <p>
            We feel guilty for the relief, but we shouldn&apos;t. Relief is not the opposite of love;
            it&apos;s the companion of exhaustion. We can miss someone terribly and still be glad
            the hard part is over.
          </p>

          <p>
            The second thing that surprises us is the persistence of the ordinary. The morning
            after a friend dies, the sun still rises. The coffee maker still brews. The cat still
            wants breakfast. The world didn&apos;t stop; only we did. There&apos;s something obscene about
            this, the way life keeps going when someone has left it. But there&apos;s also something
            comforting. The ordinary is sturdy. It holds us up when we can&apos;t hold ourselves.
          </p>

          <p>
            The third thing is the specificity of grief. We don&apos;t miss our friend in general;
            we miss them in particular. We miss the way they laughed at their own jokes before
            they finished telling them. We miss their handwriting on a birthday card. We miss
            the way they said our name, as if it were a word they particularly enjoyed.
          </p>

          <p>
            Grief is made of details. It ambushes us in the grocery store when we reach for
            the kind of crackers they liked. It catches us off guard when we hear a song they
            loved, or smell their perfume on a stranger passing by. These small shocks of
            remembering are how the heart learns to carry its new weight.
          </p>

          <p>
            What I&apos;ve learned from sitting with the dying, and from losing my own dear ones,
            is that grief is not a problem to be solved. It&apos;s not an illness to be cured or
            a stage to be passed through. Grief is love with nowhere to go. And the only thing
            to do with love is to feel it.
          </p>

          <p>
            So feel it. Let it wash over you in waves. Some days you&apos;ll barely notice it, a
            gentle lapping at your ankles. Other days it will knock you down and hold you
            under until you think you can&apos;t breathe. Both are normal. Both are necessary.
          </p>

          <p>
            Eventually—and I can&apos;t tell you when; it&apos;s different for everyone—the waves
            become less frequent. The grief doesn&apos;t get smaller, but you get bigger. You grow
            around it, the way a tree grows around a stone. The stone is still there, but the
            tree has made room for it.
          </p>

          <p>
            Leo, old friend, I hope wherever you are, you know: the stone of missing you
            is heavy, and I am learning to carry it. The tree is growing. The sun keeps rising.
            And I still reach for your kind of crackers in the grocery store, just to feel
            close to you for a moment.
          </p>

          <p>
            That&apos;s what I have learned about when a friend dies: they don&apos;t leave entirely.
            They leave pieces of themselves scattered through our ordinary days, bread crumbs
            on the path of memory, so we can always find our way back to them.
          </p>

          <p className="text-right italic text-stone-500">
            —Cynthia Trenshaw
          </p>
        </div>
      </article>

      {/* Navigation */}
      <footer className="mx-auto max-w-3xl px-6 pb-16">
        <div className="poem-nav">
          <Link href="/poems/yellow-tulip">
            <span className="nav-label">Previous poem</span>
            <span className="nav-title">Yellow Tulip</span>
          </Link>
          <Link href="/#contents" className="nav-next">
            <span className="nav-label">Return to</span>
            <span className="nav-title">Contents</span>
          </Link>
        </div>
      </footer>
    </div>
  );
}
