A dear friend and colleague has passed away after a losing battle with cancer. Eric was the kindest soul and leaves an enduring memory behind. Thinking of his family and the privilege of having known him, I’m brought back to the poem “Continuities” by Walt Whitman. Forever in pain and joy…

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.