It’d been awhile since his mother, who had also been like a mother to the good friend, left the earthly and the bodily plane of being for good. It’s been a long, painful while. But life is going to be an even longer, more painful while. Two years is only a small bite out of the time away from her, or her time away from him, that he’s going to have to put up with.

”It’s okay that you’re hurting,” said the good friend, ”it’s okay that you can’t believe it’s true.” He didn’t, and he couldn’t. He rejected this reality, he found it to involve too much pain and too much angst to be true. His anger that things were the way they were was motivated him, it pushed him along in his desire to make true and make real the universe that he once lived in, the reality that lived in his memories and that was not willing to come out into the light. Hence his feeble attempts, his half-hearted tries at resurrecting her; half of his heart belonged to this world, half of his heart belonged to the world that he wished were real, the world which she was still a part of.

That’s exactly it, thought the good friend; his heart is split and not whole, his heart is lying in two pieces somewhere in his chest. One half was beating away, slowly, weakly, but surely and with timing, and the other half was lying clear across his breast, just barely holding on, just struggling to make its contractions in time and just hardly accomplishing any of the pumping that it’s supposed to be doing. What is it that tore his heart, the good friend thought, what could have ripped the fabric of his reality so badly that it could have taken a part of his heart with it? Of course, he admitted to himself, of course I don’t know what it’s really like. To have the person that brought me into this world pulled from my embrace without the least bit of warning. To have the very gracious person who carried me when I could not walk, who fed me when I could not feed myself, who, in the simplest of terms, made me everything that I am and gave me everything that I have.

At long last he turned to his good friend. Like an older brother, and even somewhat like a father, he would, after a moment, give him his reality, he would hand it to him like a gift. A gift is exactly what it was, a precious and very priceless gift. It couldn’t be wrapped; not physically, and not metaphorically, not with pretty words nor with clever semantic veils. The good friend wouldn’t know, but the good friend would treasure this gift for the rest of his life. He would carry his friend’s words in his mind and in his heart like a treasured smooth river stone to hold in his hand and keep in his pocket.

The good friend, as a child, loved to walk along the riverbed, the dry stones with a little creek meandering along and between the bumpy gray obstacles, through the bright green reeds and through its hard, grainy landscape. He would walk barefoot just like any boy would rather choose to do given the choice between the security of shoes and the adventure and challenge of a rocky landscape. He would carefully place his bare feet, with a strategy in mind, on the larger, smoother, flatter stones, and avoid the little, jagged, sharp rocks that jutted skywards like miniature Matterhorns, harsh and foreboding. Of course, being a child, he didn’t always carry out his strategy perfectly, and he didn’t always avoid the little caltrops that stood on the riverbed, but he didn’t mind.

He was a young boy, worries had he not, cares were few.

The creek made a chiming sound as it played on the riverbed, falling and making little popping sounds, striking the river stones softly like bells. The sound of the creek was rich and intricate and random and interesting, but not stimulating or rousing. Rather, it was calming, soothing, and induced a kind of trance, a generally wonderful mood. It was the auditory equivalent of a sea sparkling in the glancing rays of sunlight at the day’s end, shining at random points, aflame with the little bursts of light as the sunshine hits the restless surface in just the perfect way — so that it gifts your eyes with a sight seldom outdone in beauty. The reeds made a small, soft bristling backdrop of sound that tickled his eardrums, the long blades of the plants touching and playing each other like he strings of a harp, muted and dampened, writing chords to a song composed of shushing.

He was a young boy and wouldn’t ever have expected it or wouldn’t know anything about it at the time, but later as a young man, he would love, love, love the feeling in his ear when his girlfriend kissed his ear and exhaled right next to it, or when she would breath deeply while his head was alongside hers and he felt that same tickle in his eardrums. And he would love it not on a sexual level, no, but because her breath was like the rustling of the reeds in the riverbed and every bit as full of sublime beauty.

On one of his exploratory occasions on this riverbed, for some reason or another, he picked up a stone that spoke to him. It had reached out to him. It was very smooth from the lengthy years that water had to do what it may to the stone, and it had a special, ambiguous shape, with alluringly rounded corners. He put it in his pocket, because it was one of those things that the mind and heart just decides upon as it feels natural, as it lay a calm upon him, as it put his mind and his heart at ease; it was an action his heart had determined to make because it made his soul smile deeply.

Now, the good friend would be gifted with something that would be just as precious.

”I’m going to give you these few truths. These simple, outright, natural facts of life. It’s all that you need to know,” he said. The good friend was curious, and he nodded. ”It’s all you need to be prepared for the rest of your life. ”The good friend nervously swallowed, a sign of anticipation and unrest. The good friend said, ”I’m not sure a few words would ever prepare me for something as big as life, but go ahead.”

And the giver said, ”I’ve been trying to decide whether life is just a bunch of suffering with brief little moments of happiness filling the gaps when you’re not hurting, or the other way around. I’ve decided that it’s the other way around. Life really is a whole lot of happiness with moments of suffering and pain rudely interrupting it from time to time.” He gave a little laugh, the kind of laugh that you do when you’re laughing at cruel and painful irony or an extremely annoying mishap. The good friend was quiet, he didn’t know what to say.

The good friend’s vibrant mind began to work. When listening to music, any kind of music, he’s often considered the small rests and pauses, the tiny moments of silence, the quiet nooks. He’s often thought of the spaces between the notes, and he’s always come to the conclusion that music wouldn’t be half as sweet as it is without the time between the sounds. It’s those rests that allow us to take in our audible surroundings, to breathe it all in and allow it to sit within us for a brief moment before the next note begins its approach on us. It provides the contrast, like a spice on a bland meal, like intricate, brightly colored moulding on a blaring white wall, like the black tie on a white shirt. It’s the same reason why he thinks that dressing in all black is an abomination (unless you’re an extremely interesting and incredible person with such a personality that it itself acts as the contrast to your appearance). How could you appreciate sound without the quiet to remind you of how special and incredible it is just to be able to hear anything at all?

The good friend listened.

He continued, ”you’re going to lose things and people, you’re going to lose things that you love. Maybe, at some point in your life, you will have lost everything that you once loved. It can’t be true, can it, that something that has already happened and passed is just done for good, lost forever?”

The good friend searched the giver’s eyes and thought that maybe he was just looking for confirmation, someone to agree with him and thereby console him. But the good friend slowly realized that the giver was right.

”No. It’s still real, it’s still there. Because it happened, because it made you who you are. It’s still there, right there inside of you, it’s a part of you. It’ll never leave you, it’ll never leave this world and this universe. You want to know why it will live on forever,” he asked, ”do you want to know why it just can’t die?”

After a moment, the good friend still hadn’t said a thing.

The giver answered anyways. ”Because it’s a part of you, and you are a part of someone else. Like I am a part of you because you helped me become who I am. And because you are a part of someone else, who is also a part of someone else… Well, the circle is complete, the cycle never ends. It will live on.”

Suddenly the good friend’s vibrant mind began to set into motion once more. He had the image of a thousand sculptors, a creative collaboration between a thousand artists, working together and putting together their collective masterpiece with all of the love, passion, and care they could muster within themselves. Each person makes their own part and thus makes their contribution the grand work, carving their emotions onto the stone right next to another artist’s own feelings, making themselves forever a part of the work, making themselves one. The sculpture is one reality, one body, one being, made completely by the life, love, and care of others.

The good friend made up his vibrant mind that this was the way the world worked. This is the way that life works.