Michelle, my heart shares your pain...
If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, I would walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.
"If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is a change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the woods where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,
Be still. Close your eyes. Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.