“I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain/ I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end/ I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend/ But I always thought that I’d see you again” -James Taylor (Fire and Rain)
There are ones whose beauty and spirit transcend space and time, and you are a better person to simply have known them. They changed you, and the world cries at the loss of such a magnificent human being. With their absence comes a great unsettling that it will never be the same, but it was in the tiniest moments that they breathed love into your life. They filled a space inside of you that can never be touched or replaced.
Perhaps, in “A Grief Observed”, C.S. Lewis said it best, “It doesn’t matter that all of the photographs of H. are bad. It doesn’t matter-not much-if my memory of her is imperfect. Images, whether on paper or in the mind, are not important for themselves. Merely links. Take a parallel from an infinitely higher sphere. Tomorrow morning a priest will give me a little round, thin, cold, tasteless wafer. Is it a disadvantage-is it not in some ways an advantage-that it can’t pretend the least resemblance to that with which it unites me? I need Christ, not something that resembles Him. I want H., not something that is like her.”
So, as my tears fall and my heart aches for a man that created so much joy for so many people, I know that he is singing with angels, and he probably has the loudest and most beautiful voice of them all.
