I wish I could have been perfect. Perfection dissapeared in my teens, and I rode this road with the seat just a little loose, with the legs stretched front to back, with the best of what I could seek, lying just inches from my grasp.
'They said' I was tall, but in my mind I was the smallest human being, who would walk through the people as though I wasn't there, and feel every eye looking me over with a quick glance, making me smaller still, but I learned to hold it in, to be not afraid, and just to let it be.
There were a lot of things that I'd wished I'd done different: Told my wife I loved her more than life, and wanted just to hold her again and again, but only I could say gooobye.
Told the sweetness of two babies that I loved them forever, but the moment did not arise, more times than I wished, I had all those times, I held them close.
To have passed something on, even outside of perfection, to that grandson who is growing, becoming so tall, finding the world slipping down as he continued getting big, oh I wanted only to hold him again, and again and again, leaving my breath for him to breathe, and now he has it.
This heart of mine kept growing, while the rest of me was fading, the purpose seemed lost, but I could tell one the story, then another, then another and more and more, I guess I had tempted perfection, but could bring only my view, and tell them I loved them, all of them, so many souls who I had the blessings to touch.
I'm perfect now, but now not with you. I have found the ones who have gone before, and I have met them again, and again, and have knelt in a new direction, so blessed with Christ.
I've been made whole, I weep with pleasure, I see lights all around, and shine this light toward you, and you, and you and all of you, that you can find the way here, to Heavens shine. As close to perfect as I can be.
Ralph Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
For John, whose life meant so much, to those of us who knew him, and all those who knew of him.
Outside of Mustang , Oklahoma
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