Thank You, Edward B.

A note found blowing in the wind, reprinted here:

If there is one thing about you that I have cherished above all else, it is your innocence. It is innocence that I felt in you, when I was in your presence. It was innocence that I felt in myself too, when I met you, that had seemed lost, but was refound whenever I was near you, and made me ashamed that I had ever lost it. It is your innocence that I miss most of all, for it replenishes me, even now, and makes me feel the world is new with each breath.


I know why things must the way they are. There is no mystery about that to me. Yet that does so little to lessen the sorrow I feel. Yet sorrow, like joy, is one of the two wings of human experience, as Rumi points out. How can we fly without them. Embrace your hurt to make it the greatest joy. You above anyone else have taught me this.


Thank you---for everything, for so long. You more than anyone else in my life have taught me what it feels like to feel myself connected to another person's life, and through that one connection---you---I have felt myself connected to the rest of humanity. How could I ask for anything more beautiful than that?


Innocence, yes, I know it is still in you, below everything else that may have clouded it over. It is still as strong as ever, still as pure as ever. To know that it still springs so pure is to feel a warm wind in my life every single day.


Thank you, yes. Thank you. Maybe I'll never get to tell you that in person, so I will throw it into the wind, like petals of a flower, and hope that the beauty of it finds it way to you somehow, in some roundabout way, in some beautiful sunny day, when the wind caresses your face, and the sunlight beams in your eyes once again.


I will be your friend forever.