"So what would you think of me now? So lucky, so strong, so proud.
I never said thank you for that, now I'll never have the chance."
I lost a friend this week. Lost a mentor. We all did, those who had the honor of working alongside Pete. It feels like a hole. And it feels like a cruel, unwelcome reminder of how fragile life is, how we shouldn’t take any moment for granted and how we should seize the breaths we’re given and feel them deeply and fully, find the people we love and hold onto them tightly and sweetly…all those things you remember when you lose someone. And I feel all that that, on some level of higher thought, but at the forefront, all I feel is oddly numb...all I feel is delayed, like I woke up in 2014 to a brand new world I don't recognize, because I can never understand why it's always the best ones who have to leave.
There's more than one song out there about this feeling, but this is one I always come back to. It doesn't dance around the finality, it fondly remembers, it humbly memorializes the legacy left on one's soul by someone else. So far, those are the thoughts I've found comfort in, and I hope the rest of my friends do too.
