What is a friend?

A friend is like the plant that grows in the same place as where you planted the seed. And this plant provides all of your needs and tranquilizes your anxiety. They nullify your fears and follow you to find peace. So many people will plant seeds and nothing will grow and yet they will still be misguided in to believing this is the actions of a friend. Others will spend no time planting the seeds and expect that plant to grow. This is not the basis of a true friendship either.

When they speak their mind and you have no fears to disagree. When they’re silent and yet you know their thoughts. When they’re gone and you don’t miss them, because what you love about them becomes more clear in their absence, than when they’re standing by your side. A friend does not try to dry up the ocean of your happiness, nor put out the fire of your wrath. They don’t resent your fortune, nor smile at your grief. They accept you for either and love you for neither.

A friend is as loyal to you as you to them. They do not lie, because they know you can accept the truth. They do not steal because they know you can accept the truth. They do not steal because they know you would give it to them if they asked, and they would supply you the same. They recognize your dreams and do nothing to stand in the way of them, but rather guide you toward them.

They do all this, because they know you would to the same. A friend is a rare commodity that a person will only find a few times in the span of their life. During the hours of days spent freely, these hours should be spent with them. For hours are minimal and if they truly are a friend, these hours belong to them.

It is important when finding a friend that you keep them, by making absolutely sure you are one as well.

When a loved one’s gone

Those we love remain with us, for love itself lives on.
And cherished memories never fade because a loved one is gone…
Those we love can never be more than a thought apart.
For as long as there is memory they’ll live on in the heart.

Death is nothing at all

Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away to the next room.

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other,

That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.

Speak to me in the easy way

which you always used.

Put no difference in your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity nor sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me.

Let my name be ever the household word

That it always was.

Let it be spoken without effect.

Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same that it ever was.

There is absolute unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of my 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.

- Henry Scott Holland

The way sadness works

The way sadness works

is one of the strange riddles of the world.

If you are stricken with a great sadness,

you may feel as if you have been set aflame,

not only because of the enormous pain,

but also because your sadness may spread over your life,

like smoke from an enormous fire.

You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness,

the way smoke can cover a landscape

so that all anyone can see is black.

You may find that if someone pours water all over you,

you are damp and distracted,

but not cured of your sadness,

the way a fire department can douse a fire

but never recover what has been burnt down.

- Lemony Snicket

I'd bring you home again.

If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, I’d walk right up to heaven and bring you home again. 

One person is missing

Sometimes when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.
- Lamartine