Thursday, January 29, 2009

For those who are left to dance...

I've stared at the cursor for the last 20 minutes. It's blinking at me, taunting me, daring me to start the once-upon-a-time memorial to a man whose absence in this world makes it just a bit more gray. But I'm at a loss. There are funny stories, sad stories, a couple of really scary stories and lots of songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But nothing says it all. There aren't any words.
And yet words are all we have. We are blessed and cursed with words, planning what to say as you walk up the sidewalk to knock on the door, wondering if you will ever be able to express the joy he brought into your life and in the same breath express your horrible shock at their loss. Words are so useless and so trite, literally worth nothing and so utterly priceless in that they are all we have to offer.
That's the truth of the incredible deficit left by Jason Dugger. The triteness of the saying that life is like a song is in actuality proven by Jason's passing. We had the words; Jason had the music. Voila! One of my fondest memories of Jason is him in that leather bomber jacket, plinking out a melody on the piano and looking over at me with those mischievous eyes telling me to write him a song. And slowly but surely we would write a song, not necessarily a good one, in fact hardly ever a good one, but good enough for us. Music by Jason, words by me.
No more. Just words. So here they are:

For Jason
All you lived was music
A deep swelling inside the soul
That became the symphony of all that you touched
You wrote us into the lines
Perfectly rising, inevitably falling
And we became the crescendo of all that you created
Our lives, your music
Echoing always in your laughter
Echoing forever in our tears
Reminding us that we now have the choice
To dance to what you left behind.
JPW

No comments: