“I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined.”
~Andrea Gibson
Thank you for leaving us with these words. It is good to know, because we need you. Now more than ever. We need your strength and your joy. Your infinite curiosity for the magic that exists in everyday living. Your inextinguishable hope even in the midst of formidable darkness.
I like to think of you dancing through the air now. Winding your way through all of the hearts that have forever been touched by your poetry. Bestowing your kisses on the scars and the broken places. On the cheeks of your loved ones and the heads of your little dogs who are probably hoping that you’ll walk in the door again tonight. They will probably go on hoping for that until the day they die. Then again, maybe they know better than us humans and they understand exactly where you are.
You bore the weight of life so gracefully. Messy and beautiful. Raw and honest. Life forced you to melt down the armor that protected and restricted your boundless heart, until it became so full you got the stretch marks you always wanted.
I am glad that in the final days you were surrounded by your loved ones. There is no house big enough to fit all the people that love you. People you never met that were nonetheless impacted permanently by your story. Now we are all crying. Preparing an ocean of love to lift you up and carry you wherever you need to go. Everywhere and nowhere.
Your words are as vibrant and alive as they ever were. They always will be. Words do not need a body in order to exist. They are beyond the constraints of sinew and skin.
All that’s left is to say thank you and I love you. It’s an honor to have lived and breathed at the same time that you did. I am grateful for that even though the times we face now seem impossibly hard. I’m convinced that your existence fixed a glitch in that double helix shared by all of humanity. The ripples of this healing can move freely in time.
I promise to carry your legacy with me. I’ll keep my heart open like you did. Even when I think I can’t do it for one more second. I will know that I can do it because you did.
I will believe you when you say you are with me more than ever before. You are with us all.