In Memory

I've never seen so much pain. I've never seen so much despair on the faces of people I love, and I've never known before how much sorrow there can be in one place. I've never seen so many people united in one memory and one strength. 

It's devastating to see someone cut down before they flower, and it's a reminder of just how fragile life can be. And it's the sort of thing that makes you remember why you live and all of the things that are less important in life. 

But if I have learned anything from all this pain, it is this. It is how great an impact one person has on all those around him. It is how central to the lives of those he loves and those who love him, and even those he only touches with a smile or a word, one person is. It is how great the consequences of your actions are. But it is more than that. It is that we can unite in the face of the darkness and make a tower of brave strength together. It is that within all of us there is faith and caring, the ability to love and the ability to grieve that gives meaning to this world. It is how beautiful the embrace of what small solace can be and what empathy there is in the linking of arms to guide us out of the darkest times of our lives is. 

And it is how beautiful the strength of those that strive through grief is, to honor and remember, to live better lives, to take up the torch and live with the flame of the love that was and shall ever be to guide and strengthen them is. 

There will never be a time when all the pain is forgotten. There will never be a day when there is not a place in the heart of everyone that honors that memory. But there will come a time when all of the meaning is there—when the memory of the arms of others that hold and bolster now lead the way for a better, wiser, more caring awareness of life, when the memories of goodness are a beacon to light the way, and when the bitter and the desperate stand with the sweet and the strengthening and are smiles through tears. 

That day may not be today. That day may not be today, or next week, or next month, or next year. But there is honor always of a life that was well and fully lived as a guiding light. And there is healing that remains, the wholesome knowledge of love that is everlasting even until the end of days, that transcends the mortal coils of the bodies and world we live in, that reaches through all planes and across eternity. 

For such love exists. And it is here.