Goodbye, My Friend

It is unfathomable to the human mind how time exists. It is such an obscure construct. That mere days can pass since you chatted with a friend, and in the blink of an eye, the snap of a finger, the tick of a clock hand from one second to the next, that person is remade into a series of warm and enduring memories rather than a physical presence in the plane of our own existence.

Grief is such a contradictory emotional landscape, that we can at once plumb the depths of sadness while, at the same time, know extraordinary joy and celebrate the life of a friend who left us too soon. We smile through tears, weep through laughter, and process the great misfortune of our loss while embracing the immeasurable fortune of having known that person at all, even for a short while.

We grieve privately, and in some cases, we mourn as a collective of friends and chosen family. We are the Tribe, and today we cry, we smile, we strive to comprehend a world that is now absent one of our own—Ethan Day.

And it is impossible.

I am bereft of the capacity to understand how this can be, and am at a loss for words to express how grateful I am to have known this warm, kind, gentle, funny man. And that I will forever have the gift of his hope and humor in the written word.

You are loved, dear Ethan, and the absence of your smile is a loss too great to comprehend.

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. ~ Washington Irving