A sweet soul

Your sweet soul left us yesterday. I wonder if another has already come to take your place, yesterday, today, or maybe soon. There are so few chances we get, so rare, to be with a person like you. And now that you are gone I feel so inadequate, so much more could I have given. How do I get better at giving now? What do I give you now, my best, what is that? What did I learn from you, how has knowing you changed me? How do you keep on being with me, right this minute? We're closer now. I am full of you. This bitter-sweet feeling in and around my heart, I'm alive, it hurts, and you're gone. To never complain, to enjoy fresh air, sunshine, food, the touch of my wife, my health, my sight. To be grateful for my family, my job, my friends, for the opportunities to serve. For books and movies, for learning and loving, to be able to do these things and enjoy them completely. For poetry, for women, beautiful things, my Mom, to be ever grateful and reverent for these life things. When you were here it was easy for me to be mad at how unfair it was for you. I'm not sure you were ever angry at it. You had every reason to be bitter and angry at how it was for your body. But you weren't. Oh my friend, how I want to say this right for you. And now you are done with that body and all its pain. How free you must be. No more of that for you my friend. These things are so hard to understand. I'm not interested in a quick, canned, or easy answer. For me, better to let this all be what it is, this life, pain, suffering and death thing. It's too hard sometimes, and harder than even that this time. It's almost impossible to find some good in how it went for you, it's a stretch, a belief in something greater than what we see, because what we saw was not so great. And so now we all go with this, this next part, where you're out of our lives, but more so than ever in our hearts. Time will probably have its way with our sadness, it has a kindness that way I guess. I'm sure that if there is anything that love can do for you right now, you are in the best of care. All the love you gave is still alive in all of us and I believe it's now yours and ours to keep forever and ever.