Because it needs to be written.

The timeline of your life is marked by a lot of different kinds of events. Some are the little demarcations of a trip or a time when you knew so and so before life swept you in different directions. Some are joyous things, the creation of family, beginning a new chapter, or starting a journey. While there are marks in our minds for each of these, they are of the light sort that blend together with all of the busyness of living.

Some, though, some cut through the heart and to the soul, and they are harder to bear. They are the ones that crack your world in half, forever separating some part of you into before and after.

It’s almost a joke at this point that I called Rod my stepdad- and I can remember the face he made the first time I did it in front of him, even though it’s technically 100% accurate. But the truth goes beyond technicalities- Rod is one of the last people that’s been a part of my life that has known me since I first came to Albuquerque, over twenty years ago. We worked together, and managed to form a friendship that survived time, distance, divorces, and yes, him becoming, technically, my stepdad. There’s a few times in life when you run across that person that gets you- the person that it doesn’t matter how infrequently you talk or how much or little you say- you can always resume that special level of comfort and acceptance with one another. Whatever you want to call it, it’s just there, and if it’s not there it won’t get there for all the wanting in the world.

Today, we had to say goodbye for a while, along with a lot of other things that needed saying. I’m deeply joyful that we got the chance to say those things; it was an especially rare and priceless gift that I will treasure until we meet again. I’m grateful that there will be no more pain for him soon.

But oh, how I miss him. I’m not sorry that I’m carrying this new mark, no matter how hard it is to bear in the next days, weeks, and months- to regret that would be like wishing I’d never known him.

And that I could never do.