In the middle of the final flood, I'm the mirror for your fallen dead. In The roiling river of blood, I'm the giver of your roses red.

The longer a person lives the stranger life becomes. It's like swimming downstream in a river. Each and every little creek you pass adds its cargo of good and bad, normal and strange stuff to your life. There are pipes and spillways that cut water out of the river too, and you lose people that were with you, or they take a different branch of the river, never to be seen again, or perhaps to be met again later, further downstream. But the older you get the more stuff you see, the more people you met, and the more trouble there is simply because you're getting closer and closer to the end of your life, and the longer you live, the closer to the end of other people's lives you get, too.

It's not by accident that I use the river analogy. I build bridges for a living and I'm closer to water than most people. I have a deeper understanding and a deeper respect for water than a person who has never seen a hole where there once was a concrete bridge. It was by accident that my first project was a bridge. It was totally by accident that my first Project Manager was who he was, and it was an accident that the person who took me out to my first project was who we was too. Or perhaps there are no accidents, or perhaps it is all an accident. I do not know.

I don't use their names because the pain is still too deep and the scars yet unhealed. My first Project Manager took the path of stillness and stagnation. He was unable, or unwilling to let go of his former life when he retired, having no other life to seek out, sought instead a gun, and ended his life. The man who took me out to my first project will bury his youngest son this week. The young man was going to work when someone pulled out in front of him.

Fifteen and a half years ago I stood on the site where a bridge was being built and wondered what in the hell was going on. Two of the three men with me that day are dead, and the third has lost a child.

It is ironic that the same day I write the essay on White Crosses a friend loses a son. Moreover, another friend who is a teacher loses a former student to suicide that very day, too. The river keeps flowing, we keep heading down to our final destination, and along the way we lose those who have traveled with us, and we are joined by those who will stay with us, however long, until they, or we, or all, part again, or arrive at the end.

Like holding the hand of someone in the dark, on a strange path, I feel comfort and less insecure, in the company of someone who has lost someone on the same day that I have. The grief, the helplessness, the pain, and the loneliness of loss is less when it's a chorus rather than a scream.

Take Care,

Mike

*article title from the song" Now I'm talking about now" by the Swimming Pool Q's.