This song came to me a few days after I heard of Ben's passing. For me, it gave me a message of one of Ben's most precious qualities. In all of the years that I knew Ben, he always consciously chose peace when he was faced with a challenge. I knew this about him, but we never talked about it. It was just one of his (many) incredible qualities. Ben consistently went in the direction of peace and forgiveness whenever there was a challenge in his life. It was as though he made a pact with himself to always do this. Or maybe it simply was his nature...though it seemed so much more intentional than that. I loved this about him. On many occasions I was so impressed with his ability to let go of difficulty and walk toward the direction of peace. I tried to learn this from him.
When I heard of his passing, the shock and grief crushed me as I know it did for all who knew him. I could not function and my heart was, and is, shattered. But, when I heard this song, I felt as though I heard a message from him. It occurred to me that he might somehow find peace in his own passing. If it were possible, he would be the one human who could do this. Even his own passing would not be his enemy. I felt as though he were communicating this idea to me, it felt so vivid and clear that I even laughed in surprise for just a second, before the tears came again. I could see him somehow telling me that he had no hard feelings about this, about anything.
I can't hold that beautiful idea for too long, because I'm sad and angry and shocked and confused and crushed and it's not fair. But I remember this message, and sometimes, in certain moments, the hard feelings soften. They fade a little, and his spirit is left, and that's what I feel. And he was all sunshine.
My heart breaks, more than words can ever say, especially for you Zephyr. And for Dante, Katharine & Katherine, Franz, all of his closest friends, and the long list of many, many others that Ben loved. My heart is so stretched with the compassion I feel for your loss, your pain, the grief. I think of you all every single day.
I was with Ben when we sat at the Boulder Creek Brewery bar and a beautiful, brilliant, and magnetic tattooed woman was nearby. I distinctly remember Ben saying to me, "I'm going to marry her." He was dead serious and barely knew you and he was already helplessly in love.
After Ben's passing, I stumbled upon a quote by Thich Nhat Hanh, which is meant to remind me that Ben is with us in each mindful breath and peaceful step that we take, in this post about dying peacefully. But I don't try to feel peaceful about it. I can't feel that, and I don't. I feel crushed. Yet there are tiny, flickering moments of peace. They are there. And I believe that we will all draw the thread of those moments closer and closer until they become one line. Maybe it is then that we will have no hard feelings.
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Edited:Â Oct 05, 2021
A Song for Ben
A Song for Ben
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