I’ll Miss you at 7:00 and 7:19

“It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.” Gibran, The Prophet.

Before I collapse under the weight of grief at your departure, a sobbing waif of a creature wandering the world in search of you and shaking my head in dismay at the choices I made to take you away from me, I want to tell you what you are to me:

You are the finest of the macaroni makers, and the quickest to eat it. You’re the untidiest of tidy people. You are the runt of the litter, but you’re strongest person I know. Your hands are tiny, wrinkled displays of God’s craftsmanship, disappearing into my own, and yet you beat me at thumb wars every single time. Never rested, forever at rest, you are my delightful space-hog and ruler of the remote control. The force of your bark is beaten only by the tenderness of your whisper.

And I know that tenderness surrounds you. Your cheeks, like knitted pockets of cashmere, are the target of my kisses. You know me, and yet you love me and allow me to know you too. Morning-time baby-talker, my Grommit, my comic genius, my dancing queen, we represent the three stages of love: we love with the passion of the untried, we are familiar with years behind us and we fight like grumpy septuagenarians. You are the runt of the litter, but you carry me often. Farewell Miss Golden; I will miss you.

“Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was truly my dawn?”