My Father-In-Law, My Wife's Dear Father...Is Gone

The text message contained only two words.

He's gone.

Even though previous text messages said the end could happen at any time, the two simple words--the first a contraction of two words: he is, and the last, a verb, expresses a state of being--punched me in the gut with the finality of it all.

There's a void when someone leaves us, and not just to travel to another city, state, or country. Their spirit that once resided in the same world as us has left, leaving an emptiness. The man I knew almost twenty years longer than my own father passed away today. Ten days ago we gathered at the home he and my wife's mother built. We shared his eighty-seventh birthday.

Words seem to lack the sufficient weight to try and explain feelings, emotions, thoughts, and memories. And we're all exhausted. Tomorrow the sun will rise and it will be not as bright, but it will bring with it hope. Goodbye, Blaine...until we meet again.