16 Comments
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Dr. Clark Roush's avatar

Beautiful tribute - to yourself, Andrea, and your friendship. I’m sorry for your loss, and since there really aren’t adequate words, you are spot on regarding silence. I learned this as never before when cancer took my wife.

Shira Erlichman's avatar

Ever grateful for the ways you feel into these words &, even just here in the comments, share yourself & your wisdom.

Kerri's avatar

"They made me feel not just cared about, but cared for. There is a distinct difference." Oh my goodness, yes. You helped me to recognize this difference today. Thank you for sharing.

Shira Erlichman's avatar

Thank you for reflecting this back to me. May we all feel cared for. 🤍

Sebene Selassie's avatar

Thank you for sharing your open heart with us in this time of grief. Sending you tender love and blessings. 💜🫶🏾🌈

Shira Erlichman's avatar

Feeling it 🤍

T. De Los Reyes's avatar

Silence can hold so much. Both an absence and a fullness. Thank you my dear friend for sharing your heart, for sharing your friendship with Andrea, for showing me how to hold both pain and joy, both celebration and grief. You make me feel so wholly human. Wish I can hug you all the way from here.

Shira Erlichman's avatar

I can feel your hug across all the water & land & space. That's how powerful you are!

Ethan Lipsitz's avatar

Thank you for sharing Andrea with us. In sharing their teachings and what's come beyond I remember how infinite those silent conversations can be with our inevitable croak. Holding you close 'short stuff' ;)

Shira Erlichman's avatar

Feels good to be called Short Stuff. Like all things, a beautiful recycling. I've learned so much from you & your open conversations with the inevitable croak. Hugging you, wise one.

Angel Nafis's avatar

"& start a therapeutic journey that would change me & open up vistas of healing. I would become a nanny for multiple families, learn to longboard, write an album, diligently & religiously write nearly 200 poems, become a devoted meditator, & discover myself both within & beyond my diagnosis." so proud and also and filled with a kind of secondhand nostalgia reading these words. you capture and distill your own peace so well, honey. it is a beautiful gift to let others in to your past peace--it gives us a portal into that place--a brief reprieve from the pain of our world and some small instruction on how to cultivate our own pockets of peace all the while

"They taught me, by example, that you can be a real listener for someone, at any moment, anywhere. You have that power. It’s simple. It’s massive. It changed my life." !!!! this is it. the sacredness. the sacred possibility to be a person really next to another person.

and then of course, very stunned by this "We must be worthy of that silence where our gone beloveds palpably dwell."

love you so.

Shira Erlichman's avatar

It's hard to describe how meaningful your reflections are to me, bae. They are a mirror, a kiss, a balm, an arrow, a bull's eye, all at once. Thank you, thank you.

As for "the sacred possibility to be a person really next to another person" this is undoubtedly your Gift, capitalized & crowned. You have changed so many lives in that exact, tremendous fashion of yours.

PAIN BABY's avatar

Sending you so much love. Thank you for being a beacon of light.

Shira Erlichman's avatar

You too, beacon 🤍

Stephanie Siewert's avatar

Thank you for sharing your heart, your loss, and a glimpse of your soul-deep friendship. I am grateful for silence- for its power to bring me into the present, to integrate the joys and sorrows and bask in the mystery of being mortal.

Shira Erlichman's avatar

Integrate, a perfect word. It has that power. Thank you. 🤍