How To Say Goodbye

(Daniel Before the Ocean, 2004)

It's an end of something. Something stops. No longer able to change and what is sadder to fade away in memory or to fade before you? So many moments frozen, at a standstill, and I wait almost to expect to see you again. Perhaps I still don't believe, with all the evidence before me, I feel like I'm being fooled. I don't know how to address death, and I'll never put your face on it. To me, you're still alive, you're still living a life, and more than ever, you're living a life at its fullest. We'll receive postcards in the mail from all the locations you've been to, with excerpts from the stories you have created with strangers along your travels. Paris will never look so beautiful, Tokyo filled with shimmering bulbs of a city that never sleeps, you'll share it all, but for now, you're gone, away, on some adventure. Where to next, Daniel.

Rest with the most peace you can ever find, you'll always be a Shananaganger.