Thirteen Years

There was once a man whom everyone liked.  He was a very good young man.  He was a friend to everyone.  Even the merest of acquaintances liked him and remembered him long after he was gone.

He had a best friend.  Which, is something entirely believable, since he was such a likable man.  Yet, his best friend did not deserve his friendship.  At least, that is how the best friend felt when he lost this very good young man.

You see, the young man, whom everyone liked, died.

Yes, he died, at a very young age.

No one quite knew why.  There was no hint of what killed him.  First he was there and then he was gone.

It was much as though a light had been switched off.  Only it could not be switched back on again.

For the young man's best friend, a light had indeed been switched off.  The world failed to be the same, which apparently is what happens when someone close to you dies.

You don't feel it at first.  You simply can't believe that something so very important, something so vital, something integral, something so much a part of your life can simply vanish over night.

At first, there is no pain, only emptiness.

A hole that should not exist is now a very real and deliberate part of your being.  The fabric of your life has been torn by a blade made from a cruel metal.

No mere needle and thread can mend this tear.  No amount of tears will make it go away.  You have lost a part of your soul.

Maybe that is what a soul is.  Perhaps all the people you meet and create relationships with and love and like and talk to and yell at, maybe all of those people have a part of you in them and you a part of them.  Maybe we all just run around with parts of other people in us, like building blocks of the soul.

When we lose someone, we lose a part of our soul, and the pain and the sorrow and the hurt and the ire and the angst is just the wind blowing through the hole that that somebody left behind.

We go around, trading blocks for blocks and gaining and giving and our block houses can become quite large, but there are always holes, often around the foundations, and more so as we age.  For, as we grow older we lose those who are and were the biggest parts of our young lives.  When they are gone, our foundations crumble to dust, leaving gaping holes, never to be filled.

Some of our loved ones have larger chunks of our souls than others.

So it was, on June 2, 1997, in the first minutes of the new day that a very, very brilliant burning soul, one brighter than a host of others, rose from the fettered chains of this world.

This beautiful soul drifted up and disappeared in a warp field that produced no sound and no visible light.  As that soul left us, it took with it a good many bricks and chunks and blocks and entire walls of other people's souls.  Some of us were left with only ragged remnants, others still had most of what they built.

Still, I walked through the streets that awful morning, with my Love protecting me and holding me, and it seemed that perhaps that one life of a great young man had not touched everyone it should have.  People still drove to work.  The clocks still ticked.  The birds still sang.  The wind still blew.

The entire world should mourn the passing of one so great, did they not know this?  Maybe there were just not enough bricks.  Maybe they never met him.  My soul, certainly, still bleeds.

I am here.  The hole in my soul is still open wide, waiting for bricks that will never come back.

Thirteen years it's been.  Thirteen years since that beautiful soul left us.

I remember everyday.  I especially remember today.

I went outside tonight and sat on the step in the dark.  I wore no shirt.  I felt something touch my shoulder.  Then my back.  Then my neck.  Then my arms.

Today, even the sky weeps.