The last few years have been rather unprecedented for me because of the number of personal losses that I have experienced.
I have lost schoolmates and friends, my father, my longest standing friend as well as a few musician comrades along the way.
Some have died from natural causes and a couple of friends were murdered. Some were sudden deaths, others like in the case of my father, it was watching him slip away three weeks after his first and only surgery.
Just recently in May of this year my favourite Grunge singer - Chris Cornell committed suicide, he was only 52 but then on what would have been his 53rd birthday, July 20th, another singer - Chester Bennington committed suicide by hanging as well.
I can't help but feel that maybe I was naive for so long, thinking that all my friends, family and comrades and people that I admired would always be around me all my life. Or if not around me, perhaps in my life one way or another.
If anything, what I have learned over these last three years is that life is absolutely impermanent, always changing and nothing can ever be taken for granted, because as the saying goes 'here today, gone tomorrow'.
I do find that I have a hard time with death, I go through initial periods of shock and grief and then I try to carry on, but then there are days where I sit and think about all who have gone to the other side and I think that life is just not the same and that I don't know how to continue, I don't know how to be happy sometimes.
Perhaps it never will be the same, and that's the sad part.
The hard part is getting up everyday and putting my best foot forward, not because I want to, but because those who have gone would want me to 'keep on keeping on', as Al Green would say.
And that is the hardest part of life, keeping on when you have less and less loved ones to travel that road of life with you.
But, I'm starting a new chapter in my life soon and I have to think that this is the most important part of my life, and yes life will never be the same, but I have so much more to give and to live for, I have so much to look forward to, that I just can't give up now, I can't stop trying now.
I remember the line from a very sad movie about a child kidnapping once, the choir sang 'If the song is to be sung, then we must keep on singing'.
So, in loving memory of Damien So'Brien, Rawle Francis, Paul Emmanuel, Andrew Moffat, Justin Lee and George Elias; I gotta keep doing what I do.
May you all rest in peace.
Thank you for being a part of my life.
God be with you.
I have lost schoolmates and friends, my father, my longest standing friend as well as a few musician comrades along the way.
Some have died from natural causes and a couple of friends were murdered. Some were sudden deaths, others like in the case of my father, it was watching him slip away three weeks after his first and only surgery.
Just recently in May of this year my favourite Grunge singer - Chris Cornell committed suicide, he was only 52 but then on what would have been his 53rd birthday, July 20th, another singer - Chester Bennington committed suicide by hanging as well.
I can't help but feel that maybe I was naive for so long, thinking that all my friends, family and comrades and people that I admired would always be around me all my life. Or if not around me, perhaps in my life one way or another.
If anything, what I have learned over these last three years is that life is absolutely impermanent, always changing and nothing can ever be taken for granted, because as the saying goes 'here today, gone tomorrow'.
I do find that I have a hard time with death, I go through initial periods of shock and grief and then I try to carry on, but then there are days where I sit and think about all who have gone to the other side and I think that life is just not the same and that I don't know how to continue, I don't know how to be happy sometimes.
Perhaps it never will be the same, and that's the sad part.
The hard part is getting up everyday and putting my best foot forward, not because I want to, but because those who have gone would want me to 'keep on keeping on', as Al Green would say.
And that is the hardest part of life, keeping on when you have less and less loved ones to travel that road of life with you.
But, I'm starting a new chapter in my life soon and I have to think that this is the most important part of my life, and yes life will never be the same, but I have so much more to give and to live for, I have so much to look forward to, that I just can't give up now, I can't stop trying now.
I remember the line from a very sad movie about a child kidnapping once, the choir sang 'If the song is to be sung, then we must keep on singing'.
So, in loving memory of Damien So'Brien, Rawle Francis, Paul Emmanuel, Andrew Moffat, Justin Lee and George Elias; I gotta keep doing what I do.
May you all rest in peace.
Thank you for being a part of my life.
God be with you.
