Parting

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence,
as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet.

I read The Prophet at the impressionable age of fourteen.  Many passages rang true and this one most poetically. 

I know now there is parting and there is Parting.  Being away from home or your boyfriend for a semester is not the same as coping with a sibling’s departure from this world:  the former a desperate longing, the latter a cosmic and existential dream from which you sometimes don’t seem able to wake up.

When Tim parted from this life, I was struck that what I loved most in him did not require the climber’s view of the mountain from the plain.  I loved Tim for his constant attention to the tiny and treasured connections that humans share, and I witnessed this every time we were together.

Tim may have not noticed (or be bothered by) a leaky kitchen faucet or a worn-out rug.  What he did notice and collect with much affection were song lyrics, movie lines and TV show quips that captured a common experience.  These became our non sequiturs and reference points, keeping the humor and memory of the original fresh by reusing in a new context. We would laugh ourselves absolutely silly.  Many of these “in jokes” stretched back to childhood.  I’m well aware he interacted this way with many people, but it always made me feel special, as if this particular thing was our private joke.

And the music we constantly shared!  I learned late in his life that he loved singing above all. Tim was a guitar and bass whiz and could hold his own on the keyboard.  Yet when his breath and voice deserted him, he declined to play an instrument, saying he played just so he could sing along. Tim loved the human voice with its full range of expression, how it bound people together in emotion and catharsis. It was palpable when you sang along with him, as I did so often.  I loved that we shared that sustaining belief and practice. 

Grief that comes with someone’s parting has its own peculiar way of bringing the little things to the surface.  Down deep we appreciate them all along, though maybe take them for granted.  It’s true long-distance vision is a wonderful thing, but Tim was an up-close and personal guy.  He was always where you were, and where you both wanted to be – among the wildflowers, on a boat out at sea, or walking through fields of gold, looking high up on that mountain, together.

Seana Remillard