Love is What We Punctuate Our Life With

I was moved to tears today...by the writings of dead man.  He was an ordinary man who loved to blog.  I was touched by the honesty and simplicity with which he put out his thoughts and feeling for the whole world to read.  Today was the first time I had ever heard of Derek Miller of Vancouver Canada and I have to say that I wish I could have known him.  

Here are some of the special things I read today on Derek's Penmachine :
What to know, now that I'm dead

There can't be answers today. While I was still alive writing this, I was sad to know I'll miss these things—not because I won't be able to witness them, but because Air, Marina, and Lauren won't have me there to support their efforts.
It turns out that no one can imagine what's really coming in our lives. We can plan, and do what we enjoy, but we can't expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won't. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur, that we could never foresee. That's neither bad nor good, but it is real.
I think and hope that's what my daughters can take from my disease and death. And that my wonderful, amazing wife Airdrie can see too. Not that they could die any day, but that they should pursue what they enjoy, and what stimulates their minds, as much as possible—so they can be ready for opportunities, as well as not disappointed when things go sideways, as they inevitably do.
A wondrous place

The world, indeed the whole universe, is a beautiful, astonishing, wondrous place. There is always more to find out. I don't look back and regret anything, and I hope my family can find a way to do the same.
What is true is that I loved them. Lauren and Marina, as you mature and become yourselves over the years, know that I loved you and did my best to be a good father.
Airdrie, you were my best friend and my closest connection. I don't know what we'd have been like without each other, but I think the world would be a poorer place. I loved you deeply, I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.

And then in the earlier blog entry Sometimes It Lasts, Sometimes It Hurts Instead:

Music, that most human of instincts and inventions, can do that at its very best: reach past our rational minds, through any analysis or cynicism, beyond any physical pain or discomfort, directly to our emotions. Then it can draw those feelings out and tap them to the surface, even (especially?) when we didn't know just what was in there...
...And here's why it, and the rest of Adele's songs, made me cry like that last night. There's the heartbreak of rejection, of unrequited love. There's the heartbreak of breaking up, of losing love. There's the heartbreak of getting dumped, of not being loved anymore. They ache, they seethe, they're horrible. That's what Adele makes her business singing about.

But worst of all is the heartbreak of having been in love, for years, and both of you still being in love. But one of you is going to die. And no one, neither of you, not anyone else, can do anything about it.
That's not what Adele is singing about, not directly. I hope she never knows how it feels, or if she does, that it's many, many years away. I didn't invite her voice there, but it seems to know, so when it breaks down my barriers and taps the depths, that's where it goes, and what comes out.


I cant imagine what it would be to confront that kind of helplessness or to stare death in the face.  But reading his words makes me want to be brave.  It makes me want to do the things that I enjoy in life as he hoped his daughters would. It makes me want to take all the hurt from having been in love and lost it and let it go.  It makes me want to try again for the kind of love that last, because I recognize that all the devastating hurt that comes from losing that love was worth it.  Love is what we punctuate our life with and in some ways all we really have in the end.