For a few years in high school, and the first year of college, friends and family members were dropping off at a steady pace, either from suicide, accidents, or a disease prolonged over years of suffering.  By my senior year of high school I felt like I was just marking names off a list, wondering who was going to be checked off next.

Fortunately, it ended, and the time came for me to make final peace with the loved ones I had lost.  This pic was done as part of a final mourning period in which I was saying good-bye to them all, before I was ready to put their deaths behind me, their memory inside me, and clear the path before me.

Rest well, friends.