Gone

The things of the past feel like a fading dream. Like when you wake up from one so vivid you're convinced it's real, until the new reality begins to set in... you try to think back over what just transpired in your slumbering mind and find that all that remains are wispy shadowy phantoms hollowly calling to you from a distant realm in the dark... a haunted voice, it doesn't quite scare you, but leaves you feeling utterly alone and empty but for the yearning desire to give life to the dream, the memory, the phantoms, once again.

Scenery fades out, blends into the distance, everything is gone, but the darkness remains. It's encroaching, and thick all around, separating you from the past, the people, the old realities, faint pantomimes through the ethereal fog. You try to run back to them, embrace them, relive them, revel in them... but the darkness of the present reality holds you back; restrains you. You fight back, struggle against the resistance, defiantly rebel against what is, in an effort to rejoin what was. You're helpless and the phantoms are still fading, you surge forward with one last desperate burst and manage to move an inch closer, you've won! A glimpse is caught! A memory washes over you....

But it's incomplete... it's broken; not the same; not what you wanted; not how you envisioned, it's as empty as you are. A hollow shell of what once was so fulfilling. What you long for remains unattainable. Your struggle was for naught; even as you attempt to savor the morsel of memory, it begins to dissipate, back into the air, returning to the shadows, becoming the darkness, retreating from you. Taunting you with the vague remnants of recollection, still beckoning as it slips further and further away. You stretch to your limit, clutching desperately at the smoky tendrils. The sound of an old music box and surreal laughter whisper across your thoughts and gently imprint on your mind...

It is gone. 

They are gone.

*YOU* - as you were - are gone.

The sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings are gone. 

They cannot come back. 

You cannot bring them back.

Gone

......

Did they even exist? 

*Yes

Are you sure? 

*Yes... I remember...

Do you? 

*Yes, I.. I know I do! Somewhere... they were once so vivid, so fresh!

But now?

*Well... they're still there; somewhere. Just... out of reach, but still close. A ghost of the past floating on the edge of my consciousness. Always just out of reach. A vapor hovering over me, intangible, but... but still there... I miss them. 

Who?

*The people of the past.

...

The relatives so recently gone. 

The friendships once so strong. 

The person I used to be.

and

The things that once made me, me

All are sorely missed


R.I.P to those of you who meant and mean so much to me. 
8 family members in one year.
The mark of death is still so vividly present on all those who remain. The grief still fresh, the loss still stifling.


Memories are all that we have now.
Memories, and the pieces of themselves they gave to us before they passed on.
I love you
<3


(It is now, March 21, 2011: and 8 were not all that were lost in that single year, more followed those, and still more have gone in just these short three months of 2011. Yet still we keep on)

June 13th, 2013 - We lost my beautiful Aunt Traci after a valiant two year battle with cancer that doctors said should have killed her in just 2 months. She fought hard and inspired many. As a family we will strive to make her death mean something. To make all these deaths mean something. People my age are always surprised by how much death I've seen, these are not just names from a photo album that no longer have a living body attached. Not just faces that fade from the family parties and reunions. They all meant so much to so many, and their deaths have changed me forever in various ways. If you're struggling with the death of a loved one, just remember, what's done is done and can't be changed, but we can always seek ways of making it count. Write down all your good memories of them. Try hard to remember obscure stories! As the life fades, your memory will, and increasingly with age, so write them down, make a record of the joy they added to your life and then make their life, and death mean something.
Make it count.

I love you Aunt Traci, say hi to everyone for me <3