Trivial Traveling

Tim Hackett. The news hits like a ton of bricks, and yet like feathers from so far away. So stunning, disheartening, awakening to what this world means...or doesn't. A man I spent so much time with, and yet never enough. A man whose idealism I could never live up to, and whose love for those around him fed everyone with joy, laughter, love. A man to whose soul these cliches shed not an ounce of light. This is my friend who through things so seemingly trivial as encouraging that next game to share good times, or to invite me up to the hills to play, always gave my world a little more. Even when it wasn't deserved, he concerned himself with my heart. He gave me a little more good; a little more happiness; a little more puzzle to figure out. Tim could send my world spinning and my mind challenged with a single sentence, a single word, a single look. Those words he uttered years back, "a good friend is leaving tomorrow" ring through my mind in eerie irony. I missed my chance again, Tim. I'm sorry.

But nothing I write here can ever suffice to encompass what he was, for he was more than words could ever say. For me to try to capture him inside an insufficient box of literary inadequacy seems more of an insult in its assumption that mere words could do him justice. No, words do not do... one must have actually experienced Tim to understand his being. He was more than anyone could know...and he was an asset to this world.

But now he's passed, and is the first reminder of mortality to come from the peers who are all too often deemed invincible. "They'll be there when I get back" is proven all too wrong, as the first, but not the last, bids his last goodbye to his kin, brethren, friends in an unforseen early departure. Those who did not know him certainly missed an opportunity, and those who did did not always go far enough in realizing who he was and what he meant. I, unfortunately, struggled to get past my own inhibitions to be truly open to him; and to learn from everything that he was.

Even as this news still seems foreign, untrue, impossible...I know in my heart and mind that all deaths are incompehensible. The tears that flow for the loss of this friend do so irrationally - they should be tears of joy for the knowledge that he lived happily. He lived deliberately. He loved every moment and nearly every person. He goes on in my heart and my memory. He inspires me for all of my time that's left. And whether he continues in another realm, I cannot say. I can assure, though, that he changed my world and many worlds for the better, just for being him.

Tim, I never did enough. I'll miss you. I love you.