Now That You Are Gone

By: Victoria G. Smith

 

You, my friend, who loved
the written word, who rejoiced in
and celebrated my love affair
with it, now that you are gone,
how shall I instruct the ink
to flow upon my page?
BFF
I think of you on cool, sunny mornings,
or quiet, wistful afternoons, or at dusk,
pregnant with the promise of storm—
when solace comes easy
as enjoying a hot cup of tea.
You offered uncommon hospitality
as if it was “no big deal,” enough
to make me want to curl upon your knees
like a kitten that had nothing better to do,
nowhere it would rather be,
where I could soak myself in the warm
refuge of license to just be myself,
as if this was all that’s expected
of me: laughing as I’ve never laughed
before, silly as silly gets.
In your company, I’ve lived some
of the happiest days of my life.
Thank you, my best friend,
forever.

Poet’s Notes:

This month, we usually celebrate romantic love. But this time, I choose to celebrate the love we are blessed to enjoy with our friends.

I offer the two short poems above I wrote in honor of a couple of my dearest friends who’d both passed on within the span of one month, last month—the first of this new year. The loss of these two friends of mine—one male, the other female— has shaken me to my core. Although I loved them very much, my visceral reaction to their passing surprised even me. It reminded me that in many ways, the platonic love in friendship is purer than romantic love, and thus quite powerful. For this love is free of the chemical, hormonal, and neurological influence of physical attraction and desire that qualifies and, one might say, necessitates, romantic love. We love our friends only because we choose to do so—not by obligation to moral duty or bodily instinct, and we are equally also entirely free to choose who they are.

It’s said one is best judged by the kind of friends she has. If that were the criterion, then I must be a thoroughly a blessed person, indeed. Quality, not quantity, is what matters here—thus, those hundreds of friends one appears to have on Facebook don’t make the grade. It’s an interesting statement of our time and culture that we’re urged to have more of everything. I agree more is better in some things— such as wisdom more than knowledge and internal beauty more than the external, although the latter can be often an inspiration for, and a reflection of the first.

But in friendship, it isn’t the number of friends we have nor the amount of time we spend with them. It is, rather, how we’ve affected the life of one human being. Were we kind and loving facilitators of each other’s journey? Did we bring out the better angels of each other’s nature? If we can say yes to these, then it does not matter how much time we spent with our friends—we have been forever touched, and thus forever changed by the experience.

Love is indeed forever. It is truly the only thing that remains when everything is gone. This is how love is immortal—and how, when we love, we touch eternity itself and thus become like gods.

I try to remember this whenever I am again tempted to despair over the loss of my friends. They are not lost—they have simply been returned to the air I breathe, the energy that invigorates and recreates all life, to the universal compassion that holds the very fabric of our multiverse. Liberated from the limitations of time and space, they are thus now truly always with me wherever I am.

This is why I use the words, “passed on,”, rather than “died” to describe what we call “death.” What dies is the mere physical, albeit unique form of life manifested by the people we knew and loved. There is no death. It is, indeed, as the greatest poets and spiritual teachers have tried to tell us through millennia—a mere passage into the next stage of life.

(All rights reserved. Copyright © 2016 by Victoria G. Smith. For updates on her author events & publications, go to VictoriaGSmith.com. “Like” her on Facebook at Author Victoria G. Smith. “Follow” her on Twitter @AuthorVGSmith)