reflections only seen in stillness

Sometimes, especially when you live day to day, hours at a time, forging ahead and forgetting what's behind you, what makes you realize, take stock, think back is always something unexpected and shocking. Head in a whirl, life progressing, there's no time to look back, until everything stops and you don't know what else to do. Yesterday everything stopped.

We sat there, the place we'd all known each other, the place that was more a home to me over the years than a home has been. And we sat there.

We talked, we smiled, we were baffled, we were angry. We were there for her, for him, for each other. And we all just turned up, like lost pigeons finding home after so long of circling the skies. We tried to strategize, to sort it out, what had brought us there, it seemed unreal and unbelievable.

And then, once the bits of information began to fit, we reconciled ourselves to it, to the strange news. He's gone. This man we all loved, who loved all of us in very different ways, who meant so much to all of us without the fanfare of loving another person, who gave us all the joy of laughter in a world of confusion and discontent, who helped pass the time and in its passing soothed us all with his irreverence, his stories, his greatness; he's gone.

And then I realized, I belong to something bigger than me, even though I refuted it out of weariness and misunderstandings, even though I didn't always enjoy it, I'm part of this network of people, this group, this family. As I looked over our faces, filling with waves of grief, hearing the music we all knew him for, music we sang together, I realized even though I didn't belong to him, we were part of this thing bigger than him and me, and he is one of the most monumental figures among us. And I had been strong for her, even coolly distant from it because he was more important to everyone else, except he was important to me too, and I'd just been too busy living day to day to see all that we shared behind us.

When I cried, they peered into my eyes with red rimmed glossiness, held me and took care of me. It's been so long since I let someone take care of me. And then someone else cried and carried on, and it was an entire day of being there for everyone with waves of grief coming over us. The world stopped for us yesterday, and in this crisis we all found that there was nowhere we would rather be than with each other.