O O O O

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“The first person I knew who died was Opie. I think it was 4th of 5th grade. Opie was a foster kid who was passed around… nobody liked him. He was a brat, he was a rebel, he stole candy from the bay shop and threw rocks through the church windows, and did horribly at school. Then one day he jumped off the swing bridge into the Crooked River, and they never found his body. We all cried and cried for days. Even though all of us secretly didn’t like Opie, we felt a deep emptiness and sorrow just from the reality of his death. At school they held an assembly in the gymnasium and hired a grief counselor to come and speak to our class, the kids about death and about Opie. And I remember she held up Opie’s jacket and said, ‘Opie no longer resides in this jacket’. Then she pointed to his desk which she had brought up on stage and said ‘Opie no longer resides in this desk, but he resides in our hearts, in our spirits, and in our minds. we contain him now in our memories and our history and when we live and move and walk, we become a living testament to his former life.’ she told us to live honorably with joy and abundance in the memory of those who died, and those who have lived before us.”