Life and hope

Your image rises through the hours
and days, and months and years.
I think of you a lot as someone
who will always be in my heart;
how could you not be given the
bonds which hold us together?
And yet who has changed and
drawn apart, from me, from us,
from family, because you must.
The journey which dragged you
from us and from yourself, was
no doubt, needed. But even if
it was not, it happened and it is
what it is and none of us know,
how long it will last, or if,
you will ever return, to yourself,
or to us, or to something we can
all share, as meaningful relationship.
There is a sense of deep loss,
for all of us, and yet it is not death
in any literal sense, although it is
in a sure symbolic sense - a death.
It feels final and yet may not be.
They say that while there is life
there is hope and perhaps, with
the passage of time, you will return
to yourself, and to us and what
was lost will once again be found,
in a relationship restored, re-made,
re-born. A returning which demands,
the celebration, and the fatted calf,
for such joyful reunion, so longed for,
and so doubted, will be as if, the
leaving never happened; or was
no more than fantasy or dream.
The tendrils of love will hold tight,
to the hearts of us both and to all,
who love you; perhaps looser than they
were but stronger than ever because
they have been stretched and found,
resilient enough to endure what life
and soul, demanded of them.
Sometimes we must set out alone
and the only thing we can carry
with us, is the love of those we have
left behind, even when, we may not
remember, or recognise that love
for what it was, what it is and what
it always will be. Until we return,
in some way which allows us to see,
as such journeys demand, what we left,
for the first time, and with new eyes.