The taste of loss -
it was indescribable and there were really no words I could gather together for you to understand.
'You're doing great.'
- that platitude we know oh too well and one that rings around the eardrums of everyone not doing great -
like drums in the parade, you hear it louder and louder aligned with the procession of what was to come next.
The drums stop, uncertainty and silence sweeps in while we all search for an answer.
No one else could really connect with the gravitas of our situation
and while our sorrow began to carry us away -
to another place -
gravity kept our feet firmly to the ground.
We played his old jazz music to make up for the dissonance in the emptier house
the house without his idiosyncratic footsteps
the house saturated with his electric guitars
- but without the player who would use the tips of their fingers for the chords.
Although not pious, we knew you had reached Nirvana and for that I had to be content, give my consent
because the consensus was you never convalesced.
So you transcended and travelled -
while we had spiralled on this earthly plane -
in opposite directions we went
but somehow still it feels like you never left.