Bernie
I will miss you my friend, your jokes, your advice, that vision of yours from it's greenest, lushest, blue-sky landscapes and also from the dirtiest and most squalid circumstances of the ancient tales you tell; Phoenix emerging from the black ashes to span the heavens gloriously once again in your come-of-age sobriety. A vision of pain and suffering that vanishes, healed, in an ephemeral smile, that capacity to cause all those around you to laugh uproariously with a single word, a gesture or a look. That's you, friend of my soul, that always made me see the folly of insisting on my own suffering by confronting me, fully, intentionally, with those so clear images of a pain so more real and profound than mine and to do it with such absolute simplicity, at once warm and loving but also mocking and gleeful that irresistibly made me reconsider time and time again.

Fare thee well friend of my heart. May Dylan and Richards, Harrison and Clapton and all the rest make way for you and accompany you toward that other garden. My best memories of these last few years go with you and bind me to you. I do not lose you. Those memories will make way forward for me, they will guide me, they will illuminate my path and they will always be a source of certitude and joy.

Goodbye my friend and see you soon.