11 Months

It has been almost a year that you have been gone.  It's become apparent that various people who mourn you have varying views about what capacity in which you are "gone".  I respect each and every one of those views.  But for me personally, my heart aches at every thought of you because everything I've ever believed tells me I may never see you again.

Yet I sit here in the place where my mind's eye last "saw" you, writing with relief as if you can read this.  Working as I am on my latest theatre project, this is such a bittersweet time to be missing you.  I remember an occasion downtown a few year ago; after I saw you in one of your brilliant roles we walked past Centerstage.  I said, You'll work there one day!  And you replied, "Hey, you will too!"  Well Tim, I am making an entry into professional theatre.  I think you would like knowing that.

Sometimes I feel so guilty for missing you as much as I do.  Too guilty to find relief in talking about it with anyone.  I think the guilt stems partly from the months that would go by without seeing or speaking to each other, except to pass you on campus and say "How are you? We need to do lunch!"  Yet no matter how much time passed between those lunch dates, our conversation would pick back up on the same plane on which we left them...the sign of a true friend and a generous, kind mind.  You had such a small circle that I suppose I also doubt my "right" to still be grieving for you. I can't put into words why this is haunting me; other than that it could have been, should have been, so different.  It's easy for me to say that though.  I wasn't living as you.  I didn't have to make the decisions that tormented you alone.  You had the right to those, I suppose.  Though the decision you made feels very unfair, both to us and yourself.

I think that I am just rambling now, yet fittingly so.  Grief doesn't have structure, Tim.  I think you liked structure.  I think I do to.  I think you and your decision haunts me because I can't explain it, put it in a box, and put it on a shelf.

Maybe I'm taking a risk by sharing these thoughts with you.  And by saying "you", I know I am no longer talking to just Tim, but to anyone else who may need to read this.  To anyone who cannot put the grief they feel over an inexplicable loss on to a shelf; safe and tidy forever.  Life is not tidy.  I wish God had helped Tim see that it was okay that life is not tidy.  Sometime life is a mess that pains you at every turn.  So go ahead and reach out for a hand that will help you around the turn.  Otherwise they may stand, hand outstretched forever, grieving the emptiness.