Sand.

I undersand it now. The grains. The wind blowing in my face. That day... I will never forget it. Digging up her body in the dunes, wiping the sweat from my forehead. Swearing that he'd pay for it all one day. I knew the search for revenge would be fruitless. I knew it would leave me emptier than before. The soilution staring me right in the face... Yet I ignored it.
Years passed until I finally got there. The hourglass of life kept going however, and once it was all done I was but a senile pebble. I buried him in the same desert as back then. That's when it hit me how truly insignificant it all was. With each dig of the shovel I threw more doubts over my shoulder. I was just as alive as the man I'd been covering up with the material that mirrored my own journey. Forever still in a dune of particles, unless provoked by a gust or shoved aside. Shoveled out of the way; stepped on. Forever still, until made to cover bodies in the desert.
I had realized then, that I was not unlike it. But it was not like me. I was it.
Despite having to join him, I offered myself up. Dig for dig, knowing there was naught left beyond becoming one with what I had always been; nothing but a dead bag of sand.