*Falling Awake

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die”.
Thomas Campbell

This morning I found under the seat, a parking decal from what feels like a long time ago. A long time ago when I stopped at a pharmacy on a summer night, when you said you love chocolate and water (together) and I laughed at the odd food choice, inwardly loving the eccentricity of stranger passing through. Passing through town, and evidently through my world. Blind to your own journeys ahead, you hoped that you would stay around and we would play; outside in the sun, in the sand. In the morning we used to pray on the phone, you wide awake and me barely coherent. You laughed at my enunciation and repeated everything I said, and most times we both completely forgot the truth, lost in a beautiful world no one else understood. I found entirely new pieces of me while I talked for hours in a coffee shop with you; and I stop sometimes on the bridge where the car hit you. Underneath, the waves are calm and on my skin the wind is gentle.
It seems that there is a sudden silence where once music used to play; an aching quietness that engulfs both those who dare to admit it and those who remain in the fast lane, in denial, unable to acknowledge inevitable change. It might be comforting (or not, I haven’t really been able to decide) to know that this is not a sudden finale. It is more like a long jazz song slowly fading into nothingness, the sand in an hour glass gradually shifting to the bottom, while we watch helpless-unable to control destiny. So we pick up our pieces, learn our lessons, laugh at the irony, maybe cry a little, and then move on the general direction of wholeness. I can’t help but smile because I hear your laughter in my head, loud, contagious and sweet. Just like you used to be. Just like you still must be.

*Title of Gary Jules' very appropriate song.