They never fade, you know.

Those horrible pains from long ago.

They tell you with time they will disappear, but it simply isn’t so.

That’s what my dying friend said.

Lying still in his hospital bed.

I had made a promise to stay with him until from this world he had fled.

“Friend, do you know that I’m here?”

I said leaning closer to his ear.

He squeezed my hand and smiled a little as his eye produced a tear.

“I know that you’ve stayed by my side.

And I know of the pain that you think you hide.

I’m using the last of all I am so that in peace you can abide.”

From this knowledge I reeled.

I pretended my hurts were all healed.

I locked all my hurts in the deepest vault; they were supposed to be sealed.

I asked how it was to go on.

When you’ve carried deep hurts for so long.

If my hurts would not fade away, I did not know how to be strong.

“You have to give your hurts away.

A little piece of them all given every day.

You use them to comfort and heal others that you find hurting along the way.

“Those pains are not yours to keep.

Those wounds that got buried so deep.

Hoarding these pains that you’ve collected will leave a harvest of sorrow to reap.”

What value could be found in my pain?

What comfort in seeing how deeply I’m stained?

If my pain is so damaging in my own heart, how could it bring others gain?

“It’s not about making yourself well.

It’s not about escaping your personal hell.

With those pains, you may enter the prisons of life and open the darkest of cells.

“Your hurts are not your own.

They are there to use as touchstones.

Make them a sanctuary where lost ones can run, then lead those back to their home.

“That’s how the sorrow abates.

How you fill the holes that your pain creates.

When you’ve given in love all these things that were your sources for hate.

“That’s what I’m doing for you.

By lovingly teaching you how to be new.

I have set free the last of my pain so that it could bring healing to you.”

With that, he then shut his eyes.

No time for lengthy or awkward goodbyes.

I, having just learned how to live my life, as he ended his with a sigh.