You said ‘God is cruel’ the way a person who’s lived his whole life in Tahiti might say ‘Snow is cold’. You knew, but you didn’t understand.” Stephen King,  Desperation

Days such as this exact pressure on a writer.

There is pressure to write something poignant and profound, something others who’ve undergone similar experiences can read and say, “Yes, I know what this is like. I feel what he feels.”

I’m not going to push back against the pressure. To be honest, I haven’t the will. I’m just a bit too heartsick. 

Instead, I’ll let the pressure roll over and flatten me under its weight. 

What sorts of colors are produced when my insides are exposed, what sort of portrait will those colors paint, I cannot predict.

                                                                                                       Let us see.
We say goodbye to a friend today.

It is a sad day.

This day makes me think of saying goodbye to my dad.

A handsome nurse came and spoke to me then.  

“He’s very sick right now,” the handsome nurse said. And I didn’t know when he said it that “right now” was not a precursor to him getting better. It was the nurse’s way of saying he’d be gone soon. 

Our friend is “very sick right now”, and it doesn’t make us less sad to think how sickness is a necessary part of health or death a necessary part of life.
It is a sad day.

Time, that cold measurer of change, has taken its final measurement of our friend.

You see, I don’t believe the cosmic forces of time and space care at all about our busy selves living our busy little lives. Despite our incurable distractedness, change still happens. Entropy still happens. Death still happens, and how does it never fail to surprise us?

Time and change have left our pockets empty, save for the wishes.

I wish time came with timeouts. 

I wish change and pain were not twins.

I wish God made animals more durable. 

I wish I was better at enjoying Life.

I wish memories didn’t fall upon us by their own whims. I wish we could choose them. 

I wish our friend will find a Clearing at the end of the Path where he can be free of pain. A Clearing with trees of bacon to eat and doors to pee on.

I wish it wasn’t so damned hard.  

Goodbye Charlie. You’ve been a good, good boy.