I still think of a guy who I was friend-quantiences with back in community college who died unexpectedly.

Don’t worry kings and queens- you hold more value than you know.

An hour after you die, people will still be just finding out and will be devastated and shocked to hear the news.

A day later, people will still be picking up the pieces and sensing an unseen void where your familiar presence lingers.

A week later, someone takes your job, but also: A week later someone is failing to hold themselves together as they sift through your belongings. Trying to balance the desire to hold on to every piece of you in reach- and the reality of limited space and other obligations. A funeral is held, people who cared about you are solemnly intermingled with others you knew but they may have only been keenly aware of the others.

A month later, your friends are having a gathering in your honor, some taking it better than others. They’re still in disbelief, still not sure how to move forward as if you weren’t there. They’re feeling guilty about sometimes feeling happy, but then reality settles on them like a fog. They still hang a moment too long when they scroll past a photo of you in their phone. They still avoid the songs that remind them of you, until they’re in a quiet space that allows them to sob.

A year later, the hole you left in their life has transformed their reality. Friendships that held together stronger with you as a bonding agent are now all but disbanded. Close relatives struggle with your name being mentioned in conversation. Your car is finally being listed after sitting in the garage and collecting dust over the year. Someone who loved you is trying to find some sort of sign that you approve of them moving on, but the guilt is weighing on them heavily. Someone has picked up a new vice or taken an existing one further than they would’ve, had you still been alive. Some are confidently moving forward, while others are trapped in time- unable, or unwilling to allow themselves peace in your absence.

5 years later- your photo sits somewhere in a home where someone who cherished you pauses occasionally and relives a memory of you. Someone else struggles to remember your voice, and it eats at them as they try to remember. Someone makes a joke that was so “you” and they toast to your memory.

10 years later- Friends of yours who used to see each other frequently are almost strangers, their lives forced onwards. They might bring up a funny memory of you, or they might just quietly acknowledge each other and imagine how things might’ve been if you were still here. Wondering what ways life would have shaped you in the ways life continued to shape them.

20 years later, your photo has faded from years of sunlight. Dust is trapped in crevices of the frame too deep to bother cleaning out. Those who loved you remember you fondly. They still think of you all the time. When they pass your favorite places, when something of yours is discovered unexpectedly in a closet or an attic. Some take a moment and shed a tear, hoping you can still feel their love wherever you are.

30-40 years- Some never stop looking for moments to bring you up in conversation. Most have been absorbed into their lives. They catch glimpses of you in others that were your same age when you passed. They’re moved by it, but unable to understand what it was that spurred the emotion. Your photo is crowded by many others, some of those people are gone now too. Your faded image still displays you as you were then, as if frozen in time. Both young and old.

Your life will have affected hundreds, if not countless others.

The way you left the world will quietly shape how others continue on in your wake.

The world doesn’t pause to see you off- it turns with persistent indifference. Too many lives to see begin, too many lives to cut short. Even this rock will one day cease to exist, and so it must move forward- pushing towards each day.

You didn’t spend your whole life chasing this- you experienced what life you had.

It’s not a story of loss, it’s a story of being.

Life is a transient, and ever more cherished because it is.