Looking back and foward

So I found out yesterday that a once close friend had passed on. I say once close because like most friends, after awhile, you tend to lose touch with them. We move away and we move on, it's just life. Well, we used to live together with one other friend. We lived with this large family, they had several children over the years. It was one of the best times of my life, some of my best memories are of being in that house. The children were the best, messy, always fighting, but they started growing up. When that happens, we have to leave, go out and find other children. That's how we live, through children's fear, excitement, their belief that at any moment that something could lunge out of the dark corners of their imagination and drag them off to oblivion. Children grow up, they stop believing, we stop being. Now, the older kids and adults do help up out from time to time with the younger generation, what with the "Watcher in the Wood's" and "The Boogey Man" stories, but when the last child stops being scared or amazed, we have to move on. Sometimes, some of us get attached to a child. We become invested in them, we're like an invisible parent, just out of sight rooting for them to succeed. When that happens and we stay to long, we start to fade, or so they say. No one really knows because we've haven't experienced it...yet. Some say you slowly fade away, others say it's just POOF! one second you're there and the next you're not. I've heard we start shedding and flaking until we're nothing but a pile of dust and rubbish to forever be mingled in with the trash we live in. It doesn't matter how it happens, it only matters that is does. I'm getting older now and it seems that more and more of us are going the way of the trash heap. I remember when I was younger and all I wanted was for the future to hurry up and get here. Why not, I had all the time in the world, my path stretched out before me so far that I knew there was no end. Now, it's all I can do to keep facing that direction. Sometimes I feel like I'm cresting the last hill and I see the finish line up ahead. To late did I realize that I wasn't in a race. I should have been taking a leisurely stroll, stopping often to enjoy the view. Now, I'm constantly glancing back trying to catch a glimpse of something I might have missed. Oh well, enough gloom and depression from me for one day. Here's to you my friend, no matter where we go or how we get there. May our paths cross again in this world or the next. I'm gonna miss Josh.