Rocking Into the Sunset

My dear friend just took his own life. Normally this blog is about life experiences, the richness in seeing something new and majestic, but tonight it is about sorrow. The kind of raw emotion and shock that enters the heart after hearing such news. How anyone ever begins to absorb such a sorrow, I do not know.

He was one of the most kind, gentle human beings to grace my life and the lives of so many. The loss of his presence will be a blow to his community and is truly a loss to human-kind.

What saddens me most is the degree of loneliness and sadness that he must have felt to come to such a decision. And of course being human, I wonder how I could have touched him more than I did to make sure he knew that he was loved. That he was important. That his life being in mine meant something to me. But I cannot reflect on those things. They don't bring him back.

My mind keeps seeing a rushing river. I don't know if it is because water brings all things- purity, life, clarity, renewal, movement, change, constancy. I want to feel this rushing river flow over my immense sadness. I want this river to bring him back to me. I want there to be some kind of cleansing answer to why and how something so tragic has happened.

And that might be the hardest thing. Even when you know what the 'why' was and the source for his immense sadness, to actually wrap my mind around a why that could make sense of something so painful is beyond what I am capable of.

And so I picture him on a white rocking chair, with his stylish black glasses, his designer blue jeans and his warm smile that always touched me to the core. He's rocking into his later years, the years that should have been his, with the sun displaying a magnificent canvas behind him. Years that were taken from him by the dense fog of sadness that had to have filled his heart. Years that, in the end, he took from himself in order to get to some place that was brighter than what he could see now.

Marion, I will miss you. I will always hold you in my heart and cherish the time that we did have together. You truly were special. A gift in my life that I will cherish for the rest of my days. And one day, when many seasons have come and faded on, when I hopefully reach a ripe old age with a crown of grey, I will sit on a white rocking chair and think of you, rocking in your memory and for those lost years that you didn't behold. Truly, may your soul rest in peace.