Cloud Atlas

( for Liam )    
      
“People pontificate, ‘suicide is selfish,’ while career churchman like Pater call it a coward's act typically because they lack the necessary suffering to sympathize. Couldn't be further from the truth; suicide takes tremendous courage.”      
       
You were a husband and father-        
  a devotional man kneeling at the altar
of friendship, supporting right and wrong        
in accordance to your moral compass        
       
Most of all, you were a human being;        
  therefore, subject to earthly demons
taunting thoughts beyond control      
 perhaps memories or regrets-      
 maybe voices calling you home      
  who doesn’t contend        
  with such in the flesh        
       
One thing I know – your choice      
  is no one’s fault, because you      
were not a man to blame someone else;
but, assumed responsibility        
  for your own decisions    
       
It’s an eternal recurrence, this life      
  the one before – those to follow-      
Because “Our lives are not our own.        
We are bound to others, past and present,        
and by each crime and every kindness
we birth our future.”      
       
If there was anything I could say to you
it’s that you will be remembered by me
  as a man who didn't take this decision lightly-
  and, for whatever reason, thought leaving
  in the best interest of your family        
       
If I can imagine you now, this moment
  you quietly walked through a door
with your name on it- available to open
  anytime you were ready to return home
  because we are not prisoners of this world    
       
We each have an assigned exit route        
available when it becomes too much-      
  when the weight of flesh and bone      
  is too heavy for our spirits to bear      
  suffocating our will to continue        
       
If I could imagine you in the future        
  I would see those you loved most        
walk through their own doors        
at their chosen or appointed time-        
to find you waiting for them      
       
Godspeed, Liam      
   Until we meet again. . .