Sometimes even superheroes get the blues. It's a beautiful yet lonely night as fluffy white snow falls mid-March and settles effortlessly along the tops of branches. Yet my heart aches for a different vision. A sight of turtles sunning themselves just as unassumingly on logs along the banks of a small man-made lake in Apex, North Carolina.
There, my dear friend Jerry and I built our friendship, and there we both got our stride back. I am so sad tonight, and my heart so heavy remembering it's been a year since he's been gone... and that I wasn't there to say goodbye with the bagpipes. I can still hear him talk and laugh. He still sometimes whispers to me in my dreams, but there are no words for the longing to take one more walk with him. To count turtles. To have him tell me about life from further down the road.
At 40 years my senior, he was always a bit ahead of me. Even when we were recovery buddies from our respective ailments. Although, I would like to believe, we were always very close in our maturity... which is to say always around 17. It worked for us. Generations apart, we had a common language. It's not something I could easily explain, although a few special people in our lives speak the same one. It knows no age. And in losing Jerry, I have come to hope it knows no bounds.
I speak to him in my heart and know he's close. It's just like him to throw a snowstorm at us when it should be spring by now. Perhaps he doesn't want us counting turtles without him... and he knows we don't want that either.
There are people throughout our lives in difficult times who offer to help. And there are those who show up. Jerry and Toby brought me into their lives and their family when I was adrift in the world, and for that, they are forever in my heart.
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