Remembering Jackie..
Life is a fine lingering of letting go and holding on. Today we struggle to toe that line between remembering a legend and our deepest grief over the sudden loss of a woman we loved. Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage. Courage, honor, resilience, and strength are just a few things that our friend Jackie was known for. She spent so much time exuding strength and vitality as if she knew we would need that strength one day. Sometimes it’s the little things in life that we don’t know we’re taking for granted until it’s too late. However, life is under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it’s no worse than it is.
Jackie wasn’t an actress or a celebrity, but she certainly was a class act, a queen, and a superstar. In death, she has been remembered by friends across the country for her kind and generous heart and how the sun shined when she was around. She was a bright star, an incredible mother, and she made friends with everyone she met. I met Jackie about seven years ago at an old job, others have different stories, but we all have one thing in common; That Jackie touched our lives in so many ways. I have spent the last few weeks in a semi-daze at the thought that we will share no more first times. As you can imagine, there’s nothing broken but my heart, but alas, burdens were made for shoulders strong enough to bear them.
All good things in life are fragile and easily lost, but it’s often better to love and lose than live with nothing. Even though we’ve lost a true, dear, kind friend, that doesn’t mean that she is truly gone. She will live on in our memories, in our hearts, in the songs we used to sing together, and the books we read. We have to realize that our lives could be gone in a moment; there are no guarantees that we will be here at this time next year. Let your heart guide you, it whispers, so listen closely. Learn to live each day to the fullest and be grateful for the opportunity to experience each day anew. You never know when it may be your last.
“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the way which you always used to. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, Smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.”