Your presence is something I’m trying to make sense of. It’s like a quiet knowing that it holds more than what is being presented. It’s a quiet questioning, wondering who you are and how we are connected by this name. It’s his name I see when I look at yours.
You tell me your story slowly with your quiet spirit. I sit and watch and wonder, think and miss him. Be a teacher, he told me, without words about it suggesting a balanced and happy life in that occupation. He’s the reason I stayed in education when I wanted to leave.
He has been a source of strength, education, direction, leadership, comfort, laughter and acceptance in my life. I’m afraid he might not be there anymore. I’ve tried to reach him after the fires and I’ve had nothing but the sound of emptiness.
Then there’s you. Your presence I appreciate so much but it makes me feel as if there’s always going to be an emptiness where his presence once existed. It makes me want to cry. I think about the fires and where he might have been and how stubborn he would have been about leaving.
Your presence helps me think about him still being alive and well. I hope he is.
