Death is often viewed as the end of a story; a life can write a novel or a novelette or an epic, but when the heart stops and the body loses its last breath, life drops the pencil and the story is finished.

But if you’re a talented enough author, not even death can end your narrative. The same goes for a person whose life was so inspirational, so affluent, and so exuberant—his story couldn’t possibly be killed by some doleful flatline.

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Sometimes It Feels Like Everyone Around You Is Dying

When a person leads a life that is committed to helping the ones he loves, when he would do anything for his friends and family, when he has your back even if he disagrees with you, then that person’s story will never cease; it will be carried on by his friends and his family who cared for him just as he cared for them.

This past week, I lost a friend—a brother—whose story will forever continue within my heart and my soul, as it will within the hearts and souls of everyone who knew him.

During his lifetime, he was blessed with a loving family and friends whose pride and adoration for him trumps any story’s end. He influenced each person he came in contact with. Through his words and his acts, his likes and dislikes, his impenetrable commitment to the ones he loved, and even through his extraordinary laugh, he changed us as people; each one of us who stood there trembling for him through his final services are finer and stronger individuals for having known him, even if it was only for a short while.

The quality of a person’s tale isn’t dependent on the amount of years in his life, but rather on the amount of life and love in his years. The brother I lost—that we all lost—this past week possessed an unparalleled amount of love, determination, vigor, and tenacity within his being in the short years he walked this Earth. Facing and overcoming adversity at a young age, he was a role model for people much older than he.

He helped me in my future endeavors more than I ever let him know.

He was an incredible polemic; he was confident and outspoken. He was hard to beat. So when I write and try to form an unassailable argument, I always think, “How could Joe debate this?” That has made me a better writer, and that is just one of the ways in which his story will continue to live within me. And with countless others who have a similar tale to tell about our beloved fallen brother, his story will never burn out; it will live on for decades to come.

Now afflicted with a throbbing emptiness in our hearts, and though new memories can never be formed, we can only simply carry on as he in life would demand we do. We’ll continue his story with our own proverbial paper and pencil until we meet him again.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee, much more must flow;

And soonest our best men with thee do go—

Rest of their bones and souls’ delivery!

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke. Why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

— John Donne, “Holy Sonnet X”