h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't imagine many people come here that often any more. Not that they forget. Just that they have to get on with there lives.

It made me think.

How long will it be before I just get on with my life? Will that be a good thing when it happens? I guess it will. I guess it will happen too slowly to notice as well. Not that I'll forget - I could never do that - but there has to come a time when it doesn't feel so raw. The hole will always be there, I guess I'll just learn not to fall into it by mistake quite so often.

I don't imagine this will be read by anyone - Cal or Dax maybe, and they will know what I mean, but in case anyone does read it, I had better tell you what I'm ranting about here.

My brother - let's call him Pencil - it was his name in a way - well he died just under a month ago today. And it made me think of Tuc, because he was lost too soon as well. Pencil was 31. Old to lots of researchers here, but he was my "little" brother, and you never expect to lose your little brother (OK at 6'2" and 14 stone he was not that little!).

I've hung about hootoo on and off for a while since, but hardly posted. I guess I needed somewhere to write about this, but I don't really need it to be read - I just need to think "on paper", so to speak.

It's funny - in some ways it's important that life carries on, but then in other ways I want to shout STOP! Don't you know Pencil's gone! Daft really. So I didn't know whether to write something that only I would see, or whether to shout out to people.

Then suddenly it ocurred to me that I should post here. It's Tuc's memorial, but I doubt he would mind, and Pencil never had an online presence that he told me about. It's quiet and reflective and won't get lost - without making anybody read about it all unless they want to.

So what do I want to say? Not much really. Just that Pencil was the best man I have ever known. He was my "Best Man" at my wedding, but that wasn't just a title - he really was the most fun, the kindist, least selfish and just generally best man I have known. So many of the most fun, most stupid, and generally most memorable things that I have done were with him, and I would never have had anyone else there instead.

It was all working out so well - he was married a couple of years ago, settling down and loving his new job, getting a house sorted out, and I reckon there would have been some Pencilets in a year or two. And our Uglet was just getting to see how much fun her uncle was. And now he's gone. Why? What sense is there in that?

So there, I just needed to say that it seems to be the best people whom we lose soonest, and the world is so much the poorer for their loss. And yet, it's because they were so special that we miss them so much, and we would never want to have missed out on that privelege while it lasted.

If it hadn't been so good, it wouldn't hurt so much to lose.



Ugi


A light, a flame, each person bears
To warm and cut the dark of night
And with each life whose fire one shares
Upon our paths we cast more light

The mean, the small, the cold of heart
Their torches burn but feably dim
While love of life marks a man apart
For such a blaze is borne by him

Of all the men who's lights I've shared
Of all whose light has warmed my way
The one whose torch most bravely flared
Is he whose life we mark today

And all whose lives he's formed a part
Who've shared his fire, you know, like me
His selflessness, his loving heart
His friendship and his loyalty

But now that torch is all burned out
The privelege of that warmth withdrawn
And we must carry on without
As shocked, and lost, and cold we mourn

Although we've lost his balzing glow
And stumbled blinking into night
It's worth the darkness just to know
He burned so fast, but shone so bright.

Just me Ugi, we lost Dax last year

Oh Cal!



I hope you mean lost to hootoo rather than lost lost.

One is a shame, but the other is a tragedy.

I forgot that, of course, when I started a thread here you would have it appear in your conversations list. I didn't mean to drag you back into painful memories .

I'll start a thread on your PS so we can have a happier chat there perhaps.

Ugi

- for three who died too young .

First Tuc and then Dax - noone should have to face that Cal.

hey come on you'll have me all melon whatsit When its much better to be happy as that's what all of them would want, Tuc, Dax and Pencil.

Agreed!

!

And I must !

I'm going to say a couple of things and then I'm going to leave this thread to you and Pencil.


It does get better, over time that raw pain changes to a dull ache, and you'll start remembering all the good things you did together, the stuff he did that made you laugh, and the scrapes you got into as kids, instead of focusing on the injustice of it all.

you know where I am if you need anything, or if you just want to talk, or if you want to repaint my personal space

I have not posted on hootoo since early September 2006 when my father died.

I'm sorry to hear that Floh.

*gives Floh a *

I'm so sorry Floh. It is so hard to lose someone you love.

We plant a tree for my brother this weekend. The spring was the wrong time to do so (inconsiderate of him eh ).

It doesn't seem like 6 months, yet in also seems like forever.

I think I might read this - it's the best explanation I have yet found:


The Explanation
By: Rudyard Kipling


Love and Death once ceased their strife
At the Tavern of Man's Life.
Called for wine, and threw -- alas! --
Each his quiver on the grass.
When the bout was o'er they found
Mingled arrows strewed the ground.
Hastily they gathered then
Each the loves and lives of men.
Ah, the fateful dawn deceived!
Mingled arrows each one sheaved;
Death's dread armoury was stored
With the shafts he most abhorred;
Love's light quiver groaned beneath
Venom-headed darts of Death.

Thus it was they wrought our woe
At the Tavern long ago.
Tell me, do our masters know,
Loosing blindly as they fly,
Old men love while young men die?



Ugi

Administrative PS - Kipling died more than 70 years ago so the above should no longer be in copyright.