This is the first of two articles that are completely disconnected from each other, but they’ve both been brewing for quite some time over the last month, so here they are…

She’s gone.

I’ve never been so sure of how it feels to lose somebody, and believe me I’ve felt it a lot. That hole inside of you where that person used to fit suddenly has no way of being patched, short of you completely disconnecting from everything that person was and meant to you. And you desperately don’t wan to disconnect, so much as the wound in your soul hurts.

But a very good friend, and somebody I would have liked to have had in my life for an eternity, is gone. I don’t know if she actually died or not, but it feels like she did. Her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages hadn’t been updated in months, and recently was deleted. All channels are quiet. I can only assume the worst.

It didn’t help that you were sick and nobody believed you. I had my doubts at times, but I listened to you cry and took you at your word, I felt your pain, and I tried to be there for you as best I could. I knew when I visited Oregon late last year and spent the long hours driving to-and-from Eugene and Portland that this may be there last time I will see you in this incarnation.

And this is one time in my life I actually wish that someone had lied to me, had lead me down a rabbit hole without the benefit of a basket full of chocolate.

But all her direct lines of communication are gone, and given she was on full-time oxygen and obviously unwell I’m left to conclude that… she’s gone.

I met her as an Asatru Priestess.. excuse the expression, but as an Assaholu.  But she was the first member of that particular path of paganism that I felt really understood completely what she was following, why she was following it, and genuinely “believed” in the letter of her path.  If my situation had been better I would have followed her as a student and learned that path under your teachings.

Later, she starte following a Christian path, and while I don’t totally understand the spiritual shift that took place I can certainly understand if the “reception” she got from the local pagan community (and especially certain members of Eugene CUUPS) would have kept her from considering joining Eugene Unitarian as a JesUUs or even as a non-parochial pagan or freethinker.

I miss our long talks about spiritual things.  I miss our explorations of Eugene on random drives.  I miss the Ingress stuff we used to do.  But mostly I miss you.

So, whether or not she is actually alive, the person I knew is gone.  And I mourn for her passing, whether she’s in Heaven, Valhalla, or even still on this planet walking around.

Godspeed, Vyronika.