Sad news came to me today by way of another member of the Yahoo! Group I am a member of. For those of you who may not know this, I lost my wife, Patricia Grace Fore, on August 16, 2004.

After Pattie died I joined a Yahoo! support group for young widows. They are a great group of people, whose numbers unfortunately grow way too fast.

One of the members of the group, Dusty, was a great guy who excelled in being tremendously optimistic about his life, even in the face of his own loss and his own health problems. He never failed to make us feel better about the situation we were in, even though his own was ofttimes worse than our own.

Dusty passed away last Sunday from his ongoing health problems.

There just aren’t words enough to express how sad this is and how much he will be missed. You are gone but not forgotten my friend, and you gave help and comfort to many of us along the way with your friendship and understanding.

Another member of the group wrote the following poem for Dusty some time back:

Grief is Like a River

“My grief is like a river
I have to let it flow
But I determine where the banks will go
Some days the current takes me into waves of
Guilt and Pain
But there are quiet pools
Where I can rest again
I crash on the rocks of anger
My faith seems faint indeed
But there are other swimmers in here
Who know what I need
Loving arms around me.
When the waters are to swift
And I just seem to drift
Someone kind like Dusty
Listens to my broken Heart beat.
Grief’s River is a process of
Relinquishing the past
By swimming into the
Channel of Hope
I’ll reach the shore
At last.”

— SF1

As many of us have said, you were our special angel, Dusty. Wind to thy wings, my brother and friend.