"Call no man happy until he is dead," because only then will you have all of it to judge.

I was journaling this morning. I was thinking of a loved one I don't see anymore, and it occurred to me:
There are those folks out there, you think you know how they fit into your life, which spaces they occupy. And you're right; but that's not the end of it. It isn't until the less you see them, the more you see them everywhere that it hits you:

We are made up of the people we have known. Our stories are patchwork, sewn together and unfinished.

This makes me think of Shadow and Neil.

where's that quote originally from? i know it froma Tom Waits song-- 'Misery is the River of the World'

its probably older

In AG it's from Herodotus, if I'm not mistaken. One'a them old Greek guys who thought up a bunch of stuff way back when.

Probably where Waits got it from, then

in the context of the song, it means that life is painful and horrible, and that we're not happy until we're out of it

your interpretation is probably better for living a good life, though

Herodotus, and Neil (or his characters, anyway) mean that life is not happiness, and that no one is truly or completely happy in life. As death is unknown, one *might* be happy then, so it is a fair statement that it may be that some of the dead are happy.

It's not meant to be so much of a downer, though... it's a statement about life and emotion being transitory, rather then "woe to us, all is lost."