Amidst the river of time (For a friend)

*For a friend
-- I know life is short and sometimes our time with loved ones flies away much faster than we would like, but just make the most of it. That's all you can do and the greatest gift you can give is your time and spirit and love. And remember that those who most deeply touch us leave an indelible imprint on our soul, forever, just as I once remember hearing that G-d pressed down on the world and left his own imprint. A beautiful saying, whoever could have told me that? :-)

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We all have a past.
And a present and a future.
We all have memories, traumas, joys,
Dreams, possibilities.
Upon different paths we traverse the universe,
Our destinies sometimes intertwining with others,
Other times flying solo,
Always moving forward...

Time is the one given, a basic building block of life.
Infinite, yet finite, time defies us all.
Living in the river of time, we are sometimes unaware
Of its motion, its substance, its nature--
Until it is gone.
Or rather, until we are no longer physically a part of it.

It is often easier to see another's river than our own.
Sickness can cause their river to cloud, grow muddy, lose nutrients
And vitality.
We feel helpless and distant, our life preservers and best attempts
To save our loved ones must by nature fail...as we
Cannot enter their river, heal their liquid time, cause past events to be erased,
Past years to be relived, flowing in a different direction.

Time will best us all, in the end.
Some journeys ending sooner than others, some tragically,
Some peacefully, some triumphantly,
All with their own effect on the ocean of time.

A river never flows alone, but dances with streams, tributaries, oceans...
We cannot enter another's river, but our own time river is influenced
By those of our loved ones, sharing water, nutrients, characteristics, life...
In this way, those we are closest to live on in us, in our lives,
Our characters, our time. The nature of our own river,
Our own path, our own time is an everlasting
Tribute to the lives, time, and influence of others.

Thus death is not an end, but rather a transition,
As we live on in the lives of all those we have touched,
Just as our loved ones' essence lives on in us, forever.