May the Good be Forever Blessed.

O heart, halt here a while beside the abandoned encampment of memory, and ask the dust what it has done with the footsteps of my friend. For the wind has passed over this place, and the tents are gone, yet something of his nearness still clings to the air, as perfume clings to a garment long after the wearer has departed. Losing a dear friend is like losing a limb. Not because one falls at once, but because the body, faithful in its old habits, continues to reach toward what has been taken. The hand extends, the head turns, the mouth prepares a word. Thus does the flesh learn bereavement before the mind submits to it. Tis to be rendered asymmetrical before God. What is friendship, if not this: that another life enters ours so deeply that its departure leaves us uneven before God? Grief moves through memory, as a blind man reads the raised letters of a sacred page, slowly, reverently, knowing by touch what the eye cannot recover. There is now an absence that drinks from my cup and walks beside me in the evening. The place where you stood does not close. It stays open, like a tent flap in the desert night, lifting under a wind that never tires. Your words came easily when mine failed. Your companionship made the day less heavy in its limbs. In your laughter there was reprieve, and in listening, there was shelter. Many are the people who speak; few make speech feel like home. Many are the faces that pass before us; few alter our soul for the best. O Lord of the desert night and the moon above ruined walls, if my friend has come to You weary, receive him gently. If he has crossed that last and solitary distance, grant him the hospitality denied to all travelers on earth. Give him a shade without decline, a water without bitterness, and a mirage that is generous with mercy. O friend of my better hours, if there is peace where you have gone, may it be vast. If there is light, may it receive you gently. And if remembrance has any weight in the unseen, know that here on you are carried still, in that inward chamber that will honour you. Losing a dear friend is like losing a limb. Yet even this does not say enough! A limb is only of the body. A dear friend becomes part of the breath, part of the measure by which the world is carried!