Gone is the hardest word in any language.

I am a bounty of emotions today.  Mostly gratitude and peace, which is a nice change.  But it is a bittersweet place to be.  In order to be here, it means that I was given the gift that I have been looking for.  An explanation and a peace agreement of sorts.  It means goodbye.  A real goodbye.  Not a questionable, maybe, does he really mean it goodbye.  It's exactly what I've always known I needed.  And I did need it.  Without a doubt a needed it.  I think he did too.
I have full doubts that it was actually HIM that I was speaking to, but whatever.  I think it was someone else pretending to be him for whatever reason.  It didn't sound like him, talk like him, type like him, spell like him, express like him and didn't speak to me or treat me like he does, but nonetheless, I was willing to play along for the sake of peace...that gift of peacemaking and truce changed my whole world and probably the entire trajectory of the rest of my life.  Peace does that, you know.  That's why I think he needed it too.  Now it's time to heal and move forward.  After a funeral is never the hard part for me...that is when resolve and surrender come upon me.  No, the hard part for me is pulling up to the funeral home and seeing the hearse sitting out front; the ominous sign that there is loss before me and that pain is imminent.

The death has happened.  I have grieved hard, picked out the clothes, made the arrangements, spent despondent nights in denial and sleeplessness.  Now the funeral is finished.  Eulogies and kind words have been spoken and final goodbyes have been uttered.  Now there is just silence.  Because dead things don't make noise.  And while I am overwhelmingly grateful to God for the gift of peace that he gave to me today, it is still a process.  The silence has not yet become light and relaxing.  Tonight it's still a heavy silence that weighs on my spirit; a constant reminder that silence=absence.  But I know that dark night will eventually fade away into a new day.  Mostly though, I am thankful for the hush; for the lull in the emotional torment that I have known lately.

To my friend...

my best friend...

I love you.

I love you with an unending love

to the moon and back,

round trip.

I will miss you until the day I die,

and probably after as well.

You are probably the single most important man

that has ever graced my life.

The 3 1/2 years that I have known you,

and especially the past year that we have been close

have impacted me more than anything else ever could.

I will miss you with every cell in my being;

I'm so sorry you had to go.

Thank you for showing me how to love

and making this friendship so surreally beautiful for me.

Thank you for finding beauty in my imperfections.

Thank you for being the brilliant, exquisite man you are,

  I will be spending the rest of my life searching for one of my own like you.

Thank you for showing me that I am worth it…

even if you let all that effort fall apart at the end.

I love you, you wonderful, brilliant, breathtakingly beautiful man

with the deep, witty mind who notices everything and forgets nothing,

but who’s follow-through leaves something to be desired. 

The man with the servant’s heart who gains
true joy from the ability to bless others.

To know you is to appreciate you.

Thank you for making my world and my life

a much more wonderful place to be for as long as you did. 

You were my best friend.

Although things got messy at the end,

I hope that you can sort through those things eventually,

as I have,

and lay aside the messiness.

I forgive and forget 

and choose to only remember the wonderful,

awe-inspiring, fantastic experience that was us. 

Collin & Veronica…

two names that will forever be intertwined.

I hope that you remember me with just as much fondness.

Actually, I know that you will.

I release you.

I blame you nothing and forgive you everything.

You've lost sight of who you are

and I'm sorry that I can't be there to help you remember.

But you are surrounded with people who love you and will do that.

You wouldn't have so many beautiful, faithful people around you

if you weren't amazing.

Believe in yourself and it will get better.

Infinitely better.

You were a gift.

My favorite gift ever.

Go in peace.

I will be forever changed.

xoxoxo

xoxo
♥ veronica