Those who love us
Must one day leave us,
And to those who we love
We must one day leave.
Memories--
Tiny scenes that extend as wide as the horizon
They play over and over in the mind
Like a sweet berry
That you can pick off the vine
Which grows back
Whenever you want to revisit that person
And visit that time, and that feeling, existing brief, finite, fleeting,
Once and only once, never to occur again--
and at the same time expansive, timeless, perfect in its' frame on the wall of the mind,
to be with
and behold
and to cherish.
I believe he is with us right now,
And you very well may nod and agree.
Or you might say, what do you mean?
I'd say sure, I don't see him
like I see you,
And you can't see him
like you can see me.
But I don't need to see oxygen
To trust that I'm breathing air,
I don't need to see the sun
To see what the sun illuminates,
So if he lights up our faces
When we talk of him
Thinking of him fondly,
If our eyes well up
In sadness,
In gratitude,
We can see that we are illuminated by him
Just like the sun that shines on everything.
That's how I know
If we continue to love each other
And talk of him
Not miss, but reminisce,
Then he is not gone
He is with us right now
And thru the way that we love him
We can be with him.
Those we love
Will one day leave,
And if you say they leave
I say it's thru love we stay.
..Framed first in our loss, yet ending in our love
"I don't need to see the sun to see what the sun illuminates"
Bill is gone, yet we stay and in our love his image is indelibly limned.
I wish I could have heard you read it!
Mike, I appreciated this poem when you read it yesterday at the cemetery. But now that I've had a chance to read it, I appreciate it even more. It reflects my very firm belief that those who have died really do live on in our hearts -- it's obviously a different type of existence, but one that I find comforting. You have captured this essence beautifully.