Catching me out of the blue was the tribute for him, a lovely video montage using the song "For Good" from Wicked. It was the same song used when my brother David died. We used it in the video montage, and my sisters Jen and Kristen sang it right before we closed Dave's casket.
"It well may be that we may never meet again in this lifetime.
So let me say before we part.
So much of me is made from what I learned from you.
You'll be with me, like a hand print on my heart."
This is what we had inscribed on David's headstone. We had the complete lyrics printed on the back of David's program, and the lyrics "Who can say if I've been changed for the better?" really bothered me for a long time. I wondered if I had been changed for the better. Certainly I knew there was blame to share on my part.I visited Dave's grave often. Perhaps as often as twice a week for at least a year, maybe as long as 18 months. I mourned him intensely, mourned my inability to bend, to forgive, to grieve completely, to heal. So much of what I became as a person in the ensuing years was from what I learned in that process: that loving people, reaching out to them, being open to who people are, forgiving people the trespasses they have, and I have, comes from clearing the air and asking forgiveness for the shared blame.
I learned that mourning never stops. I'll never stop missing David. I see him in the small boy at my dinner table who is so like him. David would adore the boy who calls himself Maximus. They are very possibly the same child, the boy I remember David being and the boy I tell stories to as I snuggle in bed at night. But, because I have learned, because of the hand prints David left on my heart, I know to enjoy those moments in snuggles. Because I knew David, I have changed the way I look at those moments.
I do believe I have been changed for the better: changed for good.
