A Celebration of Life...

My family lost a great friend last week.  After going in for brain surgery then falling into a 3 week coma our friend and my sister's soulmate passed.  Last night was a celebration of his life, not a funeral.  There was no viewing, no coffin or urn in the front of the room.  But a poster of pictures put together by family and friends.  A video running in monitors and music he liked piped into the speakers.  My sister and my father were two of the speakers.  We sang songs and said prayers for peace from the various religions and people he studied through his much too short life. 

 

We cried and laughed and held each other.  At the end people just talked and ate and exchanged numbers and emails and facebooks so that the bridges he had built to different people would not rot away without him.  The boy had been doing well until he saw a picture on the board.  It was us the three of us, the boy, me and our friend, taken about 6 weeks ago, of us playing cards.  Our friend and I with bad hands and the boy above us with a $20 and a big smile.  That moment will be forever frozen in time.  A moment of friendship and love and happiness...that is how he would like to be remembered....