A year has passed since be-medaled chests drew breath to tell my sister her oldest son was dead.
A year has passed since the midnight call came to say my oldest nephew was dead.
A year has passed and the wind has howled our agony, the sky has wept our sorrow, the leaves have fallen in a restless, rustling testament to our loss.
And yet, the year has passed. It has passed for us and we continue on. Dustin was in love with the act of living, I think. He would not want anyone in his life to give that up because he has gone before us. So, we have days of sorrow, we have days of joy. To honor his life, we laugh and have fun, but always with the bittersweet absence of him to deepen the experience. I think of him every day, I miss him every day, but the pain of loss has evolved for me. It is maturing, settling in and becoming a dimension of me. I cannot separate myself from my loss; it is one of the pieces that defines me. But, so does the joy of his brief, 25 years in this life.
In some ways, Dustin was a mirror to me. He often said things I would have said. Once, when he was about 8, he wanted popcorn. I told him we didn’t have any. He walked to the pantry, reached back into a dark corner and pulled out a box of microwave popcorn, announcing, “perhaps this is not popcorn?” Yeah, I would have said it with just that edge of sarcasm.
I am proud of his accomplishments. I am proud of his will to make his own choices, regardless of my disagreement. I can’t complain because I was one of the influences impacting his becoming. He was his own man with echoes of us all. We who knew him, in turn, have echoes of him in us.
We honor him in our spontaneity, in our reckless love of life. For if we should have any recklessness in our love, it should be in our next breath, our next heartbeat. Every act should be a crystalline moment with the richness of refraction and the play of color. To honor him, we must intensely inhabit every moment of life and make it count. Every bite, every drink, every breath. Be totally present in the moment, then let it go.
I miss Dustin. No embellishment of words or poetics can elaborate that simple, true statement. But his memory is still with me. I listen for his voice in the wind and feel the warmth of his love in the sun. He is the son of my soul and I can’t wait for our next adventure.