Mourning Peter Pan

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.