She leaves you with a bitterness unsaid
A week ago, you died.
You taught me Respect, and how it’s incurable fortitude could make, or break, a man. From you, I learnt how to reason in the most unreasonable of circumstances. Perseverance and hot bloody headedness. A fuck all attitude, and the uneasy calmness of calculated decisions. From you, I learnt that being a man of your words was a discernable and necessary virtue of the emphatic and sinless. From you, I learnt that life herself was a series of sorrowful myths and fundamental lessons.
All these lessons, you taught me, and the rest of the platoons.
And perhaps the most important lesson of all:
Sometimes.
Mostly.
Heroes are born.
And they die too young.
I know that you are with her now, in her steady embrace of the painless. She will treat you well, and kiss you with midnight breath and opium love. Death is everyone’s best friend, after all.
I salute you, and wish you well. (And secretly, I hope to shake your hand again.)
