To Renee

For Sheldon:

A Fearless Warrior Gone Home

This is not the post I wrote earlier this afternoon. I've changed it because I visited my dear friend Miladysa's blog and her tribute to her father stopped me cold. The quote she included was so much what I wanted to say to Renee and Jacquie and their families all along:

"Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!" - Henry Scott Holland

Renee and her family are grieving right now. But I know the sun will shine on them again, because they carry their light into the world. Like Sheldon, they are fearless. This is what I've learned from them, and this is what will shine forever:

"You might think that, when you experience fearlessness, you will hear the opening to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or see a great explosion in the sky, but it doesn't happen that way. Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of the human heart." Chogyam Trungpa

"In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us." Rainer Maria Rilke

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"A Broken Heart is an Open Heart." Elizabeth Lesser

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Rest In Peace Sheldon

You will never be alone