We are not born alone …

We are born amazed.

A completely pristine white page of talent waiting to be uncreased and unfurled  to the end of all that we can see that is that history of ours, yet to be heralded, yet to be written and a  grand suggestion of a future history that has no ink or footprints, unrolling to a canvas as of yet-  unexplored.

It is that book we are to become, that will someday rest on a shelf in a library to be read by others or perhaps to be ignored.

We suggest ourselves to the world, and wait for a response.  We declare our beginning and live a great life.

In the end it really is the end.

All that is left is the last part of the sentence-  “He’s gone”.

That really does say it all.

But it is the way it is said, the way it is remembered that puts the last earmark on the page.

It is the oddest things that people leave behind.  Better said, it is the oddest things that people give to others, things that aren’t carelessly missed or forgotten.  A peculiar way of seeing things, saying things, or hating things.   It is their predictability to situations that arise, the songs they loved, the people they ignored that speaks for them now- when they can no longer speak.

People make a difference when they are unlike you- but affect you to become a little more like them.

That isn’t to say that you have been swayed or changed, but the memory of certain things that they were about, affected the way you made a certain decision, or said a certain thing in a certain way.

The imprint was there to be interpreted in your own particular fashion, spontaneous and unanticipated, it becomes you but nevertheless was part of them. So it becomes a part of you.  And so they live on.

The integrity of their life slips into the body of what you are and what you shall become.  So they live as part of the equation that you send forward to others and your children.

So in a sense you take the very best from the very best of them,

when a long time down the road  you say again what they would have said, remember again what they would have suggested to you, remember a song, a flavor, or a color of what was them.

There is no boat to sink here, the people left behind, live on and will in their own lives bring forward what was spectacular about you that perhaps you could not recognize.  They shall endure and have children, that shall deliver to their own children a portion of what you offered, the best of the best of what was you.

The final sentence of you is not yet written and shall endure because you can never be unwritten.

You have affected more than you can know in a stream of life with so many rivers.  Your children are you, and theirs will be yours, and any bridge that needs to be crossed will be safer because of you and what you brought to them.

So that is you, and you have left but are never lost to us.

The color of the world has not changed, but the shade shall now be slightly different.  The crest of sunlight that sparks the cloud before the storm will have a little bit of you in it, the things that scare us in the night will be a little less scary because of you.

The urgency to live life in a fuller, more gracious manner will become us because of you.

The amazement that was you when you were born, is in us that are your children and the people that you influenced.

We are amazed.

And because of you- we are Amazing.