Peter Pan died and I’ve been mourning him for almost 25
years now. Well, he didn’t die as much as I finally have recognized the loss of
my youth and I never really honored its passing with the time and sadness it
deserved beyond passing moments of nostalgia as when you hear an old favorite
song or catch the notes of a faint perfume worn by someone you once knew. I’m not
talking about breakdown crying as one might do when we lose a loved one, but an
acknowledgement of the power and intensity that is youth that is all too brief.
Had I known heading into it, that one day I would actually feel this loss, I do
not think I would have loved it as much because I would have been so much more
cautious instead of heading into life and love as recklessly as I did – and it was
those headlong sprints into everything that produced such sweet and painful
memories that now define me. Each time I have allowed myself to wander back in
my mind and heart I have instinctively pushed it all back down never allowing
myself to pick it up in both hands into the light and marvel at its wonders and
disasters. Like turning the pages of an old scrap book where you touch the
pages as tenderly as you would stroke the hair of your children, you love the
memories that much and in many ways they are just as precious. I suppose its
kind of like the loss of a parent in that there will always be hole where they
once existed in day to day life, but more than anything we are grateful for the
chance to have had what we had while we did. It and they can never be replaced,
but how sweet the sorrow knowing that they were born out of love and wonderment
that we can only hope our children get to experience the same one day. So tonight I do
shed a tear for Peter Pan and thank him for the life we lived so many years
ago. Mostly now I am grateful for the perspective that maturity brings now
knowing that while I must grieve all of this, I must not stay mired in it,
otherwise the sweet memories that are mine to build now will be lost.
Rest well my old friend, thanks for the memories.
