Nothing Gold Can Stay

Our kindnesses matter.

What we share with other people matters. It sticks. Good or bad.

So, to be honest, this particular blog has taken me a year to write. There was so much that came with it.

I framed and reframed in my mind what story I wanted to tell and kept stumbling for some reason — so I stopped and hoped it would come to me clearly another day.  I don’t think it will, so I am just going to write it down.

Last July, my best friend, Lisa, was cleaning out her son Ryan’s bedroom and came across a card I had written to him 21 years ago — a few words sewn together, read and kept by his nine-year old self.  Honestly, I don’t recall the occasion and only have a still frame in my mind of writing it.  The cover of this card is an illustration of a boy with his dragon, sword drawn, ready to fight the world.  Inside, I had written to Ryan that he displayed great sportsmanship and showed the character and qualities of a true athlete by how he played the game of football that one night.

Forward to last summer when Lisa brought me back that card and a Notre Dame tee shirt of Ryan’s, which is where he had wanted to go to college.  He had tucked that note into the top drawer of his dresser with pictures of his sisters and family.  It mattered to Ryan that pen had been put to paper and feelings for him had been  shared.

Our words to the people we love matter.

Ryan died at 18 in April 2007 shortly before he graduated from high school.  He was golden as Robert Frost would attest.  Smart. Kind. Beautiful. Funny.  Great dresser. Ladies man for sure. Incredible athlete. His death a tragedy left to talk about another day. There truly isn’t a day I don’t think about him.  When his mom brought that card back to me so many years later I was so incredibly grateful for his life and having known Ryan for that short time he graced us.

I have little left to say except share your words with the people in your life who you love while you can.  And maybe someday those words will come back to you like time in a bottle.  Because love is circular. I will leave you with this:

Nature’s first green is gold,

   Her hardest hue to hold.

   Her early leaf’s a flower;

   But only so an hour.

   Then leaf subsides to leaf.

    So Eden sank to grief,

   So dawn goes down to day.

   Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost