Summa Ope

I am still here. How can I be here and you not be here? How can I feel the sun on my back and smooth lake pebbles under my feet and you are Not Here? Where are you? It is unthinkable that time will move on without you. Unfathomable that fashions will change, celebrities will hook up and get divorced, internet fads will come and go. I've been cut from my moorings and set adrift and I didn't get my fill of your magic. So selfish of me to even think of it that way, but it's true. I needed more, and now all I have is a voicemail on my phone that speaks in your voice when I press a button, a book you lent me that I finished but never got to discuss with you, a dream-catcher I made at your house the last time I saw you. The last time I ever saw you.

I remember hearing somewhere that worrying about what happens when you die is as pointless as worrying about what happened before you were born. That may be true for you, but you were born, and you left a deep, warm impression on people's souls, and the silence left by your absence is a constant reminder that we're going to have to figure out how to negotiate a new reality now that you are Not Here.

Where are you?