It's a terrible image, a photo of a the program for his funeral, taken by my plain old iPhone 4. The photo quality doesn't matter. The simple honest face, the smile of a person almost incapable of assuming anything other than positive intent: this is what I wanted to share with you. This is the face of kindness, the face of guilelessness, the face of someone who almost certainly saw you in your best light, all the time, even when you didn't, or couldn't. Perhaps he wasn't able to see himself the way he saw the rest of us. Perhaps we did not try quite hard enough to reflect him while he was with us. Perhaps it would have made no difference in the end. But certainly there is a lesson, in the words of its author, "a lesson/about how we spend our time".
The name at the top, poorly captured, is "Phillip Wayne Powell".
Grateful thanks to Amakeda Ponds for permission to reprint.
A friend told me,
yup, heard the news today.
If only I could take it back,
here's what I'd say,
never sweat the small stuff,
it's all small stuff anyway.
Just one longer conversation,
just a bit more than, "hey",
just a few comforting words
may have changed your fate.
We may never know the reason
or understand why,
but know this is a lesson
about how we spend our time.
Someone once told me,
be mindful how you deal with others
you never know what they are going through.
So fitting now
when thinking of you.
I hope this is a lesson
to everyone you knew
The thought that just a few more comforting words could've saved you.
There's a lesson in your struggle,
though some will never learn,
there's power
in the spoken word.
May you rest in peace.
--Amakeda Ponds, (c)2015
from an original Facebook post by the same author
All Rights Reserved
