Dear Tom

Dear Tom,

I can’t believe it’s been a year.  It still doesn’t seem real that you’re not here getting ready to calve heifers, worrying about the weather, riding horses that no one else can or would want to, grinning from ear to ear as you watch your girls feed bum calves and learn to ride.  When I think of you, I still picture you doing all of that.  We didn’t see each other every day, you and I, we hadn’t for a long time, because I am here and you were there. So it’s easy for me to pretend that you haven’t really gone anywhere.  It’s easy for me to forget, for a moment, that things have changed, that you are gone.

But I know that you are.  And I know that it’s not easy, not for a second, for the ones who are used to seeing you everyday. For the ones who depended on you, who counted on your strength and your smile to get them through the day, they feel your absence every single moment. I can pretend that the world didn’t change but they can’t.

Some people will say that everything happens for a reason.  But I don’t believe that.  I don’t believe that God gave you cancer or chose not to cure you for some mysterious, so called reason, known only to him.  I don’t think God works that way.  You were too bright a light for God not to want you here in this world for as long as possible.  I think life just unfolds in front us and God is there to help us through it all but I can’t believe that there could be a reason for what you went through or what we lost when you left us.

Some people will say that God needed you in heaven.  I can’t make sense of that either.  If God is God than what help could he possibly need and even if he did, I know for fact he’s got a pretty damn good cowboy crew up there already.  We need you here more.

I will never understand why this happened.  I know it has something to do with cells dividing and treatments not living up to their promises.  But I will never understand why you and why now, when you still had so much to do.  What I want you to know is that we haven’t forgotten you.  We never could.  You are missed, deeply and often.  Life marches on but it’s not quite the same.

I don’t know what heaven is like but I hope there are green mountain pastures, and cattle to gather and horses to ride.  I hope you sit around under the stars at night and tell wild west stories with the rest of the cowboys up there.  And I hope that it’s not really that far away.  That you can look down on us once in awhile and maybe send us a sign somehow.  We’ll be thinking of you and watching for you every time we saddle up.

Tell we meet again my friend…..

video below, pictures courtesy of Toms’ family and friends