Sorrow Will Remain Faithful to Itself

Dear Aaron,

I often find that someone else has said (or sung) much better what my heart wants to express but I can't tame into words... You are ever in my heart, my friend.

__

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;

And though this loss has wounded others too,

No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.


____

“For Grief” by John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (Doubleday, 2008).

The Waiting is Also the Gift

 

This is a poem that I can't write yet,

I find that I don't know this truth—

I only know that it rings true

with all its resonance inside of me

All I know now is the melancholy

of holy waiting—the ache of longing...

Longing to belong to someone,

someone who is mine like no one else

I want to ring all the bells

inside someone else's soul—

to give them my soul and body

for always. I want them to stay...

My biggest fear is that someone

would know me—all of me—

and then leave, taking my soul

and breaking my heart to death

Will I ever learn that

the waiting is also the gift

Or will I simply feel

like it is always the hardest part?

Will I ever get to fully give

someone else my open heart

and have them care for it? Will they stay

when who I am should scare them away?

If waiting is all there is

Lord, help me to know it as gift.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I wrote this in March 2022. Though quite a few things have shifted in my life since then, I still feel like this is a poem I can't write yet.  —JB

The Cry of the Heart

And if I could reach the Northern Lights

Maybe then I'd understand it all

Sometimes I try so hard to fight

When all I want to do is fall

Into the night

Into your arms, 

Surrender

 

"Surrender" | Songwriters: Daniel Tashian | Ian Fitchuk | Jasmine Lucilla Elisabeth Van Den Bogaerde [Birdy]

Name-Friend

Bloody hands drip crimson

with ache and regret,

I broke the very thing

I tried so hard to protect

Flood after salty flood

cannot wash away

this guilt and all my shame,

these shards opening a vein

Dripping drops of love

that should be treasured,

yet now are spattered

about, given unmeasured

But whoever measured love?

Who taught it to go by rule?

Who said it wasn't messy?

No one—no one but a fool

A different fool am I,

who aches for doing right

and crushing joy

in the heart of a broken boy

I Shall but Love Thee Better after Death. . .

Dear Aaron,

Why do I still write to you? The last note I received from you was seven years ago next month. Seven. Years. And of those seven years, you have been gone two years, four months, and two days. 

I suppose I write for the reason I always did. . .you are my beloved friend. Reading your letters has taught me much, both then and now as I re-read them. And I always felt like writing to you in particular brought my thoughts together in ways that didn't happen with anyone else. Oh, I wasn't brilliant or particularly deep, but when I put pen to paper for you, it was like all the synapses snapped, all the thoughts aligned, all the pieces came together into a full picture. Writing to you made my world bigger, my thoughts clearer...it made me a deeper, richer person than I was. That has never happened in such a way with any other correspondent-friend. 

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

Perhaps it sounds a little selfish, but I think the heart of Miss Browning's above lines is this: you are such an inspiring person that those who are given the gift of truly knowing you can't help but become better because of you. 

She's right, you know. So many times I have mourned the loss of your friendship, and then the loss of your life—and in that, I've mourned the loss of part of myself. Some part of myself was diminished when you shut me out of your life—and that part of me died with you, Aaron. I grieve that the world is a poorer place without you, you generous soul. I grieve that your family keenly feels your absence. And I grieve the loss of beauty, cheer, and depth I once had when we were so regularly in touch. 

There have been persons in my life who seemed to call out the worst in me; I did not like myself when I was around them. My family and friends didn't like who I was when such persons were in my life. But you weren't like that. You called my mind and heart to soar upward; to look toward God's Beauty, reflected in nature and poetry and music. You inspired (breathed life into) me to want to read more, think more, live more, experience more. I love the part of me that you brought out. I mourn that part of myself, now buried with you. And I eagerly await the renewal and resurrection of that part of me in the New Kingdom. It will be refined and redeemed... To know you again, not as we did, but in a much fuller way, will bring out a facet in me (and you!) that we only had a glimpse of during the years we were friends.

I can only pray that my own friendship, such as it was, inspired you and made your life somehow better, friend. And I pray that in the New Kingdom we will continually draw out the good in one another, calling one another "Further up, and further in!"

As I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning's gentle lines again, I realised why I still write to you, Aaron. I still write to you because I still love you. I will always love you. I love who you were. I love who you inspired and encouraged me to be. And I can't wait to get to learn to love you anew in the Kingdom Coming. It will be a different love there—a love pure and untainted by selfishness or any fallen thing. Loving you in the Kingdom will be something glorious that our earthly friendship could only catch a glimmer of.

I love you, friend. I love much of what you love. I love your sincerity and earnestness. I love your love for Beauty. I love your silliness and exuberance (from ringing bells to quoting poetry on tables and playing guitar until people hollered at you). I love your generosity. I love your unquenchable thirst for wonder and for knowledge. I just love YOU. And I miss you. Oh, friend, I miss you. So. Much.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

From the places you've been torn. . .

"There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve—even in pain—the authentic relationship. 

Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.”

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

______

Emptiness. I have felt its greed in my heart and in my body. There is a permanent hole in my heart while I walk on this side of the Kingdom coming, and God Himself does not fill that emptiness. He is leaving that slow-bleeding hollow right where it is. It is that absence that somehow makes me feel your presence more sharply, Aaron. 

For years there was an Aaron-shaped empty-space where you should have been in my life. You didn't just drift away, as so many friends do when life carries us along. You were sharply cut away from me one winter's day in Alaska. You became a stranger to me over the course of time, and in a particular instant you saw me as a stranger to you from then on. No one understood the ache I carried inside of me from that encounter. I didn't even understand it really. I didn't know how deep the wound went until that parting shaft was ripped out one September day, the barb leaving a gaping hole in its reverse exit. 

No words could fill that hole. No friendship on earth could patch up that wound. But when I read Bonhoeffer's above quotation, it resonated all the way down the path of that still-bleeding laceration. "It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness." He leaves the torn up place to allow us in that empty, painful ache to connect with the one we've lost: "For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled, one remains connected to the other person through it."

How strange. In those five years where even my closest Semester friendships began to wane, I felt a deep connection with you—the friend who had abandoned me. When you ended your precious life, the pain was unbearable precisely because you had already left an empty place, unfilled all those years, where my connection to you was strong. It remains strong. That emptiness makes me curl up in a ball and ache sometimes, because absolutely nothing can fill it except you. And nothing I can do will get me to you. Only God can do that, and this isn't the right time yet. 

"Furthermore, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation." I have forgotten so many details, moments, jokes, and sayings of our time together at Semester... Certainly I have forgotten more than the ones I can and do remember. But I treasure what I remember. I treasure your letters. You taught me things while we corresponded, but you have taught me much more through those same words years and years later. And the more I understand what you were saying, the more deeply I value your mind and heart, your self. Thus, the more difficult the separation. The assuaging answer isn't to forget or to stop reading your letters. Though there is intense pain in the separation, there is profound healing in remembering, especially in remembering together with your family or our friends.

For years I have felt that all I had to offer God was emptiness. Empty hands. An empty heart. Empty desires. Empty relationships. Empty arms. An empty shell. The times I've been the wisest (though they felt the most foolish) were the ones where all I had was emptiness to offer on the altar to God. Now I begin to learn that the very empty places are the ones where I find connection to the person or dream or thing that is missing. It's not the connection I would choose. The ache can be debilitating sometimes. I would give much to reach out and wrap you in a hug once again, my arms full rather than empty.

Until the Kingdom comes in its fullness and we run to the Supper of the Lamb together, I will try to remember that God isn't filling the hole, He isn't fixing the ache, and He isn't covering over the emptiness...so that I am still able to feel connected to you. Not in an idealised or idolised way, but in a  way that beckons me "Further up and further in! "

Love always,
Johanna

_____

Title: 

This is the hole

Where most of your soul

Comes ripping out

From the places you've been torn

(From"Always" by Switchfoot)

Messy Christmas

The branches have traded

Their leaves for white sleeves

All warm-blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe

Scarves are wrapped tightly like gifts under trees

Christmas lights tangle in knots annually

While many people are wrapping up their Christmas lights rather than untangling them from last year, some more traditional churches are just entering into the celebration of the Christmas season. For them, Christmas begins on the evening of December twenty-fourth (since the Creation, days begin the evening before—think of Genesis 1:5: "...and there was evening and there was morning, the first day" etc.), going through to Epiphany on the sixth of January. 

This year, snow fell like shimmering garments on tree arms a week before Christmas. Yet for many of us, by the time the day itself rolled around, the sun had melted the tree robes and we were down to shirt-sleeves and thin sweaters. I love snow, but who decided that it is “necessary” at Christmas? 

Our families huddle closely

Betting warmth against the cold,

Our bruises seem to surface

Like mud beneath the snow

Some kinds of "snow" feel necessary... We want the blanket of "nice feelings" at Christmas to mask the cracks in our families of origin or in our marriages, in our loneliness and in our broken spots. But holidays have a way of hitting our bruised places. An argument in the car on the way to a Christmas gathering reminds us of the scores of fights we've had all year. The question, "So, are you seeing anyone?" (and you know they want to add "yet" at the end of that query) rankles when you're tired of being alone, or you've recently broken up with someone, or you feel somehow lesser because you in fact don't have someone. Sometimes the bruise is cruel and bone-deep: someone is missing in the pew at midnight mass with you; there is only the memory or shadow of someone you dearly love hovering at every crowded table, making it feel incomplete. 

It is a muddy, messy time, this Christmas. Messy Christmas. That is the phrase my phone auto-corrects to instead of "merry" Christmas. I laughed the first time happened. It struck my cynical side as humorous and morosely accurate. The mud of the Fall still lurks beneath the snow of the now-but-not-perfected redemption. But clean slates are coming. . .

So we sing carols softly

As sweet as we know

A prayer that our burdens will lift as we go

Like young love still waiting under mistletoe

We'll welcome December with tireless hope

Hope. Christmas is replete with Hope. God joining to flesh in a miraculous marriage. The Redeemer was born. Happy, sentimental sigh. 

But the crushing reality is that the Redeemer wasn't born as an adult. Things didn't change when He came. Yes, there was the flash of Heaven, opened to the shepherds. There was a great sign in the heavens, leading the wise men. Then, just like the previous four hundred years, there was a lull. Silence. Hope was born...but He wouldn't be revealed for another thirty years. 

I wonder if the shepherds were like fourteen-year-old me: not subtle, hanging around wherever I could—whenever I could—to be around the guy I was crushing on. Or did they cease hoping? Certainly, unflagging hope is hard to cultivate, especially when your hope is placed in the wrong thing, the wrong outcome, or the wrong person. Those shepherds waited for thirty years. Did they continue to hope? Did they connect that awe-filled night years ago with the peripatetic rabbi stirring up the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Jewish people, and the Romans?

Hope can be hard to cling to in the darkness, but that is precisely where we need it the most. Where we need Him the most. Thirty years before the Rabbi began calling fishermen, the ancient, long-awaited seed of promise was sown, becoming a tender shoot in Egyptian and Galilean soil.

"...For you [John] will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways,

To give knowledge of salvation to His people

By the remission of their sins,

Through the tender mercy of our God,

With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;

To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,

To guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:76b-79)

Hope. It comes in through those very cracks we long to cover. He enters into our broken places. He is gentle with our bruises.

Let our bells keep on ringing

Making angels in the snow

And may the melody [of Hope] disarm us

When the cracks begin to show

Like the petals in our pockets

May we remember who we are

Unconditionally cared for

By those who share our broken hearts

_______

The table is set

And all glasses are full

The pieces go missing

May we still feel whole

We'll build new traditions in place of the old

Cause life without revision will silence our souls

Last year, table after table was set, glass after glass filled. But the gaping hole of grief gnawed at me like an insatiable, unwelcome guest. Every table felt incomplete. There was a strange distance between me and everyone I was around. Like I was in a glass bubble and could see them, but I could touch them, couldn't really hear them. Those layers show up in many ways at various times, but all last Christmas I felt it. I couldn't enter fully into anything, because I wasn't whole. I am still not whole. I will always carry in me a bleeding wound. And it will only grow as the number of empty chairs rivals the number of full ones. And one day, the perpetually bleeding bite from grief, from death will kill me. Then I can fully enter in to the Kingdom come, to the City of God and the Feast of the Lamb. Strange how a fatal wound precedes life. 

The missing pieces haven't gaped so glaringly this year, but the numbness is still floating around. My heart, mind, and body are all topsy-turvy this season. The missing pieces can never be filled—but sometimes there is a new friend waiting in a vacant church pew; there is an old friend who remembers the ache with you, and even carries it with you for a bit. 

So, let the bells keep on ringing, making angels in the snow. And may the melody surround us, when the cracks begin to show this messy Christmas.

"Snow" by Sleeping at Last (Ryan O'Neal)

Invisible Friend

Raw tears
run to clenched jaws
and angry fears...

'This is your own fault,
your foolish choice'
whispers that
nagging voice

'You chose to care,
chose to listen,
now you'll tear.'

Tear into pieces
by unreasonable
expectation,
unseasonable...

Why does it never 
align? My desires
left severed

Just a friend again,
just someone to spill
your thoughts on—
invisible still

You know, I'm so
dissatisfied in the role
of come and go

Tired of being unloved
and unseen,
yet feeling small
and mean

Wishing gladness
to any friend
is not sadness

Or it shouldn't be.
Who have I become?
To be ungenerous
to anyone?

Dry eyes,
turned down, ashamed
of my lies

I've lied to myself,
that I am okay
when I'm not,
not today

And not any other,
without beholding
my Lover

Who may not appear
by my side,
but He will be
my faithful Guide

Truth will not
staunch the blood,
it spills hot

Healing could arrive
in this life,
but I may have to bide
until the Kingdom

I choose to love,
choose to care,
with Help from above

If that makes me
a lonely fool,
choosing to rejoice
rather than being cruel

Then let it be,
my only prayer:
Blesséd, blesséd, blesséd be He.

Here's to the Firelight

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of Storm.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow Storm

_______

We watched the first red blaze appear, 

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 

Until the old, rude-furnished room 

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 

While radiant with a mimic flame 

Outside the sparkling drift became, 

And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 

Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 

— John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow-Bound

It is snowing down in big flakes from the street lamp circles tonight. There is the hush that comes with it. Kept within my cabin by the drifting snow, there is no radiant fireplace—no flickering flames to 'drive away dark spirits'. The dark spirits of loneliness crowd into  my little house and it feels like all friends are shut out, indeed. There is still a cosy "privacy of Storm" feeling, but whenever I think of Whittier, there is a bittersweet ache. You see, Whittier reminds me of you, my friend.

My copy of Snow-Bound is in a slim green book. A book that used to be yours. A book with your mother's handwriting in the front, inscribed with the year I last saw you. How can six years go so quickly and feel so eternal? So much has changed in those years—especially in my family. Too much has stayed the same—especially in my bad habits. Six years ago last week, I flew to Alaska to see you. I was worried for you. When I finally found you, waiting in your truck, my worry increased. The lack of sleep from many flights wasn't helping, but even so, my panic mode rightly kicked on. Something was desperately wrong with the friend I once knew. He was gone. . . Gone away, leaving someone else in his stead, someone I didn't know.

What I didn't expect was that I wouldn't see you again after our initial time together. You dropped me off with your friends and left me. Though they graciously looked after me that day and the next, dropping me off at the airport in good time, it wasn't strangers I had come to visit. Yet it was only strangers whom I found. You were a stranger to me—not letting me hug you, not making eye-contact with me, not making sense, not feeling safe. You simply left me.

What I didn't expect was to have you cut me off after that visit. You made sure I got home okay, but from that time on you didn't call and you didn't respond to my letters. It would be years before I found out that you never even opened my letters after that point. All because I wasn't someone else. Being myself—your friend—wasn't enough. I wasn't enough. I sat at the airport that February, tears running down my face, feeling horribly abandoned. . .because you had left me.

No one seemed to understand what a devastating loss it was to me, your friendship. So I swallowed my grief deep inside of me. What I didn't expect was to feel abandoned for all those years. You would cross my mind with great frequency, and I felt a wall. . .a barrier that I couldn't cross. And you wouldn't cross it. Or maybe you couldn't cross it either. I reached out my hand again and again—hoping—but yours never met it. You left me to reach out into the unfriendly darkness, alone.

What I didn't expect was how much I trusted your last promise to me. As long as she was safe and alive, I need not fear for your life. But I guess it got to be too much, living. And maybe you forgot that promise. All I know is, one September day, you left me—irrevocably. I didn't expect that the previous five plus years of ache would come spilling out in wave after wave after wave.

In one sense, you died years ago, but I didn't know how to grieve that living death. So, I tucked it away inside of me, because no one else cared, no one understood that aching, living loss. But in your physical death, people cared, they tried to help, they listened, they hugged me. . . At last they understood that I was experiencing a deep, deep loss. Wave after wave after wave of grief left me gasping.

What I didn't expect was to find this gem in abandonment: Abandonment (n.): from 1839 as "condition of being forsaken." In music, Italian abbandonatamente is the instruction to play so as to make the time subordinate to the feeling.

Not the feelings subordinate to the restrictions of time. . . No, time must surrender, be sub-ordinate to the feeling.

The first six weeks of grief were like a hurricane, one pounding wave after another, huge and crushing. Then I finally had a lovely day hiking with a friend, a day where I didn't cry—and I felt so disloyal to you. I visited your family a few weeks later—the time together was both healing and intensely painful. Remembering heals, but it leaves a bigger hole, a deeper ache. I felt like you had died all over again.

Then I'm not sure what happened. . . Maybe it was self-protection, but in December I was mostly numb. I wanted so badly to remember your visit ten years before, but it was like it had been erased from my mind—and not only mine, but everyone else's. There were no photos of our time together, few memories. . . I just wanted people to talk about you with me, but it was like you were gone, like you walked out of our memories. And again, it felt like no one understood why it mattered so much that we were friends, why it hurt like Hell that you were gone. It was still so raw that all I wanted to do was cover up my hurt, yet I wanted to share it, too. . .

What I didn't expect was the waves of loneliness. In my home. At my parents' house. At work. With dear friends who didn't understand. With friends who expected (even more so now) me to 'get better' or 'get over' my grief. I didn't expect this clawing, craving loneliness that nothing can fill. I didn't expect the emptiness, the feeling invisible, the feeling abandoned to drive me to distraction. But it has.

If numbness felt horrible—like fuzz between me and everyone and everything—distraction feels. . .not horrible. It even feels normal. Not exactly like nothing happened, but certainly like I'm pretending on the surface that nothing happened. I am silly at work, I laugh with friends, I flirt with the mailman, I try to reach out to others, I fill too many hours with noise—audible and visual. But in the distraction and in the intense loneliness I have been reckless, terrifying myself. Behind it all, I miss the grief (though it still washes up at odd hours). The steady waves of grief have been my connection. My companion. The distraction hasn't been all bad—it has pointed me outward; it has made me face some things internally; it helps other people feel more normal around me (I think)—I have too often felt like a "death's head" as Lewis described it in A Grief Observed. I don't want people to feel like they need to avoid me or to feel awkward around me because I am grieving. So, I've hidden my grief over your loss yet again. But I feel out of step from God, from others, and from you, because I stepped out of the flow of grief. 

For months I tried to maintain the feelings, tried to grieve well, to the point that I was exhausted. So, I took a break. . .but the break has ceased being restorative (like a sabbath day) and has morphed into laziness (like a month of Sundays). I keep wanting to go back to the grief, but I've changed and the grief has changed, and I can't go back. I can only go forward. . .but I don't know how. I feel lost about how to grieve now, about where I should be at this point. I can't compare my grief to others'—I just want to know for myself where I need to be. I don't know, though. I simply know that I feel lonely like I never have before. I feel abandoned. And that feeling does not yield to time. Six years later, I still grieve that you left me.

Six months later, I grieve that you abandoned life. I don't want to ignore the emotions or push them aside until I can 'deal with' them. I need to know these feelings—not to be ruled by them, but to know them—and I need time to be subordinate to my emotions. It can take as long as it needs to take to grieve. And the grief is allowed to change. There must not of necessity be colossal breakers all the time to prove that I care about you. I don't have to cry every day to prove my friendship and affection. There will always be a hole in my life without you. And there will always be so much of me that has been shaped by you that you cannot be wholly gone. You may have left me, but you also changed me. You shaped me in so many ways.

Distractions can be okay for short stints. By the kindness of God, this season of distraction has had its healing moments, in spite of its recklessness. Still, I want the upcoming season of Lent to be one where I learn to hold grief and gladness together. Not one or the other, but together. I want time to be in subjugation to the feelings. If I need to feel sad, even in front of other people, then I will. I don't have to be 'over' my grief by now. I will never be 'over' the grief that you are gone. There will always be the absence of you in my life. Even if your presence was quiet, and sometimes unnoticed, it was monumental to me. I miss you so very much, Aaron. I pray that the flame of your fire is radiantly mimicked upon the sparkling snow of my life. 

Created for a Place I've Never Known

"I've got my memories

Always inside of me

But I can't go back

Back to how it was...

...Created for a place 

I've never known"

Memories—I have those, too. But they are intangible. A stack of letters, smooth under my fingers, they are tangible. They hold your ruminations, a hundred quotations, illustrations, and aspirations. But letters cannot give me a bear hug. So I have your blue plaid flannel shirt wrapped around me. But where are your strong arms, my friend?

I can't wander back to the Lodge and find you there. Can't find you perched atop a woodpile at my parents' house...or at your parents' house, either. Believe me, I've looked. I've seen your bookshelf, the beautiful things you crafted, your writing desk, the footprints you left in the closet, your handwriting on the mirror. But you have gone on without me—beyond the veil to a place I've never known. A place I yearn for in the beautiful, aching moments. You've run ahead to a place I long for more earnestly now than I ever have.

Looking back over your letters has become something of a yearly tradition around our almost-shared birthdays. Ever since the day I first met you, I have known you were different than other people. Sometimes that difference was frustrating, as I just wanted an answer about your favourite food or your week's adventures. But more often, your different-ness was perceptive and inspiring. You once sent me a heart-full poem, asking for my advice, only to have me mutilate it—blind until years later to the depth of sorrow and beauty commingled therein.

I should have known that the soul of an artisan-poet, so well-versed in the language and habits of the King's world, wasn't long for this fragmented, still-fallen one. Perhaps part of your restless wanderlust stemmed from never quite feeling like you belonged here. There seemed no corner of the earth that could quite be your very own, my elven-friend. So you chose to step out of this world to find the place you had never known, but longed for all your life.

"This is home

Now I'm finally where I belong

Where I Belong

Yeah, this is home

I've been searching for a place of my own

Now I've found it

Maybe this is home

This is home"

Like Jewel says in The Last Battle, 'I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.' But there you are; you've gone further up and further in, without me. I envy you. So. Much. And I look forward to the day when I will get into Narnia and you can teach me the ways and words of the Kingdom. Who knows how long that will be, life is too dear to leave it without Aslan deliberately calling me away. But when He does—O friend!—come meet me. Show me sylvan glades where the dryads play. Teach me all the colours I haven't seen before. Tutor me in the names of the trees and the contours of the Kingdom. And help my trembling, tied tongue to learn to lisp the language of Heaven, until it becomes familiar to taste the words.

You have always shown me the world through different eyes. You have shown me beauty and wonder—ever my guide into Faerie Land. You have asked the questions I didn't even think to question. You have valiantly lived, trying to reconcile confusion and the constant hurricane of thoughts and fears. 

"And now after all my searching

After all my questions

I'm gonna call it home

I've got a brand new mindset

I can finally see the sunset

I'm gonna call it home"

Do you remember the time that you told me that your family went to the beach on or around Christmas, and that you saw a wall of water rising up and the sun behind it? Those lines from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader  sounded so naturally like something that would actually happen to you. And now you're in Aslan's own Country, the Utter East. Perhaps you sailed so far West from the Grey Havens as to arrive in the East. But you left me here without you, friend. In many ways, you left me for another world years ago. I always hoped you would find your way back far enough to reach out your hand to me once again. But we can't go back to how it was. And maybe that is for the best. I don't know if I could have borne the changes in you since that last visit. They were already apparent then...and they hurt to see. But know that I never stopped loving you and being your friend, even from a distance.

Perhaps it is better that what I do remember is you running to ring the unringable church bell in Pagosa. You, sitting on the floor, reading The Silmarillion aloud to me. The vast amount of ham you could eat! 'Phoners' and enthusiastic letters. The artistry of your hands and the music you played. The enthusiasm you had for music and lyrics and poetry. 

You were hard for me to understand, my friend. But not hard to love. You were hard for me to know how to help in fits of depression. But it seemed to be a joy for you to help me—even when I didn't always know it was your hand reaching out to me. You visited me when I was lonely. You gave me one of the greatest adventures I've ever taken, and were an integral part of my other grand adventure. You gave me the gift of your friendship, even though it cost you dearly to be open to loving another living thing. When you withdrew that gift, I felt abandoned, betrayed, unwanted. But now I know it was not because you didn't care, you cared more than you knew how. A part of me ceased all those years ago, and now part of me has died with you, friend. There are things that will never heal this side of Aslan's Country.

Missing you hurts like Hell, Aaron. Because it is Hell that stole you from me, from your dear family, and from a world that needs to see through your eyes. 

'This is worse than Mordor!' said Sam. 'Much worse in a way. It comes home to you, as they say; because it is home and you remember it before it was all ruined.' I remember you before the enemy set about to ruin you, to try to take you. But though you have gone further up and in, while I am left in the Shadowlands, neither has the enemy succeeded. You are now safe forever from confusion and heartache. You get to know how fully loved you are. You belong. 

Your seed has fallen into the ground in order to bear much fruit. In so many ways, the Lord has already borne good fruit through you, my friend, but the harvest continues. I can't thank you enough for being you. I love you. So. Much.

"A truer, nobler, trustier heart 

never beat within a human breast" 

—Lord Byron

“But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” 

—C S Lewis, The Last Battle

___________

Song lyrics: This is Home by Switchfoot
Quotation 1: The Last Battle, by C S Lewis

Quotation 2: The Return of the the King, by J R R Tolkien