IN MEMORY OF OUR FRIEND, DENNIS

 

 
Its been a long week, as we all sat helplessly, waiting for news that our friend had been found.  In my heart, I hoped that there was some terrible mistake and Dennis would just roll into town, give Marianne a big hug and tell her of his latest adventure.  But it was not to be.  On July 14th, after a week of hoping, his body was discovered, having tragically gone off the highway in northern BC.  The accident took his life.  

The miracle is how multitudes of people who knew Dennis, many of them from his biker lifestyle, offered a veritable army of prayers into the Ethernet, asking for his safety and sending their love in  abundance.  It made me cry each time I opened Facebook and saw hundreds of prayers and blessings day after day as his family stoically put one foot ahead of the other in their faithful search.  It was overwhelming to see how many people Dennis had touched in his sixty-one years on this planet.

If I close my eyes, I can see his smiling face, all golden, bronzed from the hours spent riding in the sunshine.  I can see his blue eyes, those laughing eyes, those knowing eyes that caught you off guard if you weren't expecting them to pierce right through you.  He could see your soul.  His recovery journey gave him an insight into life and love and loss, and that is what I want to celebrate when I think of Dennis.

My Blog is called, LOVE AND OTHER LOSSES, and Dennis' story is another lesson in that paradigm.  As sad as it is to lose him, as devastating as it is to know we will never see him again in this lifetime, the love he generated in all of us will last for eternity and that can never be diminished.  It teaches us that the most important thing in life is to love; although we risk being hurt and know we will ultimately feel the pain of loss, the joy of having loved another so perfectly lasts forever.  I know that there is only one purpose in our lives, and that is to love unconditionally.  Wealth, power and fame are insignificant in the end; only love remains through it all.  Love knows all, touches all and heals all.

So when you hear the echo of some Harley pipes in the distance, or glimpse a flash of a smokey blue decker with a sheep skin on it, and you remember in a painful flash that Dennis isn't with us in body, don't be sad.  Think of him riding with his brothers and sisters of the highway, and keeping an eye on us down here.  And remember, there are angels among us, loving us still.

Say hello to those other angels, Dennis.  Heaven's Angels.