In living there is always
the terror
of being stung

of something
coming for you
on the unavoidable wave

(from “Bluebottles” by Dorothy Porter in her collection The bee hut)

I have not posted since last week’s Monday musings, and there will be no Monday musings this week, but I will resume in a day or so. In the meantime, my heart is just a little too sore for reading and reviewing.

Last week, the 26 year-old son of good friends died, just over three years after being diagnosed with cancer. It goes without saying that he was too young. He had so much to give and so much to live for.

I have bothered and worried about whether to write this post. After all this is not my story – I am just one of the bit-players on the side – but in the end I decided that for we who like to write, writing is cathartic, and so here I am. But I am not going to tell the story. It is for those closer to tell. I simply wish to say that no matter how much you prepare for a death like this, it is still devastating when it comes.

I will leave you with Jerome’s own words written in January this year in his raw, honest, beautiful blog:

What is wrong with this world. How is it that so few spend their lives doing things they love and so many do [what] they hate for something they do not need. I want to shout to the masses but [s]o few would listen. I would not have listened.

This is it. Do it now. You will not be here again.

And with Dorothy Porter, because … well, you’ll see why:

talking
and climbing
with this
glimmering
young man
who was talking to me
about death
how
a good dose of death
if you truly drink it
is a gift

a gift
a fresh cold
slap
a fresh dark
creek
you’ll never sleep-walk
through your life
again

(from “The snow line”, also in The bee hut)

Thank you Jerome for sharing your pain, ideas and hard-earned wisdom so generously and openly over the last year. I am proud to have known you.