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[valarltd]

I am having a difficult day.

I arrived home in the small hours of the morning to learn my oldest friend in Memphis: Bryan Sims, Kestrel, synamontwist, had died. This was...not unexpected. He had been battling a brutal and invasive cancer for a couple of years. At one point earlier this year he was literally coughing up tumors. (about the size of a sunflower seed)

Then word came that Bradley Lea, one of my friends from Summerland Grove died from injuries sustained in an accident between his motorcycle and an SUV. He would have been thirty in about a week. We went through First and Second Realm classes together.

Beloved Persephone, into your hands we send our friends.
They were great men and good fighters,
whose enemies wielded not swords or arrows,
but their own bodies against them.
They were sons and fathers, husbands and friends.
Their passage into your realm
is keenly felt by we who grieve.
Give them rest and comfort in your dark embrace.
Send comfort to those of us left
with holes in our hearts the shape of these men.
Let them regroup and plan for the next time.
For the wheel turns and we will see them again.