A tribute to my friend Terry
To Rose

"There never was a time when you or I did not exist.
Nor will there be any future when we shall cease to be."
(Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.)

These words become so much more kinetic when someone whom
you’ve known for years is dying.
As I looked into his room from outside his window
I saw a once vibrant friend now fading away while lying comatose
in his Cancer Death Bed.
Thoughts of sorrow, anger and rage filled my mind
as I cursed the research that by now
should have engendered a cure.
Why must 1 out of 3 be cursed by such bedeviled sickness?
Buddha once said, “All knowledge is always available”.
Why then has the knowledge of the cure not yet been made available?
By now, shouldn’t our science have obviated the tears and suffering
of such a horrid personal and family disaster?
Then my thoughts returned again to sorry
as I realized the immediacy of the moment.
My friend was going to die,
and there was nothing that I could do about it!
And although at first it would appear that the immediate situation
is the antithesis of our innate instinct of survival, perhaps it is just the
beginning of a consummate state of being.
A state of being we all someday will know.
When an unwanted event occurs that a person has no control over,
the only obvious and logical choice one has is “Acceptance”.
I now have suppressed my sorrow, anger and rage.
I have finally accepted the physical loss of my friend.
And in this acceptance exists a visceral expectation
that our lives in this existence is simply part
of a natural transcendence of one form to another,
until one finally finds the otherworldly
state that so many religions expound.
I hope my words will somehow lessen your grief.

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