Welcome to my blog! Hope you enjoy reading as you look around here today.

I found out about the demise of two former colleagues within the last one week, both of them middle-aged men looking healthy the last time I saw them. One of them was a very jovial man who would greet me heartily with a big smile every morning as I headed to the office kitchenette to grab water or coffee. Hearing about his death opened old wounds – memories of friends who had passed away in their twenties. And I came back to an old dilemma; that feeling of confusion on how to react when a loved one is gone too suddenly and too soon. I penned these words  in an attempt to capture that dilemma.

How do we mourn our loved ones when they are gone?
How do we say goodbye when their time is done?
Do we shed painful tears or groan in silent sorrow?
Or spend time recalling how they lived for tomorrow?
Their faces, absent yet so present, distant yet so close
Were happy drugs of which we felt we had an overdose
Though we never truly got enough of them to ease our pain.

We come, each one a stranger, to this fateful marketplace
But sooner or later, each one is joined to another’s race
Like family, we form bonds that transcend our earthly stay
And quietly, the Grim Reaper comes to take one soul away
Do we sit in quiet contemplation of when it will be our turn?
Or live in jubilation that those who left have trouble spurn?
How do we mourn beloved ones, or their memories retain?

Times come and go, but the earth’s course is unchanged
People come and go, and their deaths leave us short-changed
Although we do not hold back our tears as they freely flow
Yet this does not change for us the one thing that we know
That what is lost in death, cannot in this life be regained
But values and legacies left behind will surely be sustained
Till that blissful day we meet them never to part again

Please share your thoughts in the comment sections; I’m looking forward to hearing them. Thank you for stopping and I pray your joy will always surpass your grief. Cheers!