This was a beautiful story. Particularly the section:
New ships rise plank by plank from the wreckage of the old, and they become the ship that carried Theseus home. New roads run over ancient routes and arrive at the same destination. New waters flow through desiccated riverbeds, and become in fact the same river. New cities grow from broken ruins, and all the residents call themselves Athenians. Two old friends meet in entirely new bodies which carry within their cells a memory of love from the day they were last together, and they reshape each other into what they remember being, but never materially were.
Reminds me of T. S. Eliot's East Coker:
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
I loved the themes of rebuilding and restoring, and how you can go on as a new person, completely different than from who you were when you started, as long as you go on. The story doesn't deny the damage, or the hardship, or the breakdowns and failures, or even claim that they'll necessarily make us better or stronger (thank god), just different. The comfort, such as it is, is an acknowledgement of how hard it is, but recognition that we have a greater capacity for adaptation and continuing. And sometimes what we need is someone who remembers our patterns to help us rebuild.