there is a light and it never goes out...

There is so much today that I want to say about Eric. I have been "writing" this blog in my head for months and cannot seem to piece all of it together, so have decided to keep it simple. The day I met Eric he told his co-workers he had just met the girl he was going to marry. He told me this a few weeks later on our first date. He was so sure of this and there was no waivering. I loved that he was never afraid to feel exactly what he felt and to express it with no holding back. There was some part of him that was so in tune with a bigger picture that he never really questioned it. I can definitely say I have never met anyone like him or have been seen so clearly by someone. Loved so clearly by someone. He brought this intensity to everything, and at the risk of sounding crazy, I can still feel it. Some souls vibrate and he is one of those.

As much as I have battled with wishing that things are not as they should have been, I surrender to knowing that they are. I can only surrender to that because of faith and because there have been little signs along the way that feel like E reminding me of this. I can now understand that at the core of everyone there are key characteristics that now matter what we experience in life, or battle with, or even when death finds us, will we lose. This is what I believe was/is at his core: kindness, openness, love with no boundaries, joy, playfulness, and creativity. That is what I believe he still is. There is this whole other thing happening around us that we are missing every day. To understand this or to even just consider this, will allow you to live a different life. I have never experienced anything like this past year. But, I can actually say that about every year I had with Eric. I learned more about life and love and myself than I had in the 25 years before knowing him. I am and will forever be grateful. "There is a light and it never goes out..."

Eric was a beautiful writer and there are loads of poems, essays, and lyrics that I am constantly coming across. I have stumbled upon the following bit of writing in various places over the past year, and after much research into where it came from I have settled on the belief that it is his. It goes like this:

"It says here that you completely changed, that you floated up into the sky without all that dead dead weight and took your place among the stars. I catch pieces of your shine from time to time. I catch pieces of you from time to time."

This says it all. I miss you E, I love you. It has hard to believe you have been gone a year. There is a void that many of us feel because you held a part of our hearts. What a life, what a soul.