Liam,
I write this as someone who shared some brief, tender and fierce moments with you. It always amazes me how we can share such intense moments with people and barely know who they are beyond a certain moment – and it’s even more confusing when such people are suddenly gone from this world. It’s a gaping, jagged hole in the fabric of the universe that is incomprehensible and irreparable.
My mind tries to grasp the gravity of this loss for all the people that knew you much more intimately than I. Your lovers, your friends, and close comrades. I can only imagine the complicated mix of grief, loss, shock, and maybe some anger that people are feeling. I also know there are so many of us on the outside of this that are thinking of you all, holding strangers in our hearts, because fuck, this is so goddam unfair. We keep losing the good ones.
The moments I hope to keep ahold of are sadly mere flashes of memory: flashes of us taking a rest from work by the river; flashes of you laughing at all the shit-talking around the campfire; flashes of your quiet, calculating eyes taking in an unfolding scene, and the comfort of the nod you’d offer when we met eyes across a space. You were such a beautiful person. And I didn’t have to know you well to see that you also carried great pain.
I’m not exactly sure why I decided to make this a public post, maybe for others who knew you just a little like me, and maybe to let those who were so close to you know how far and wide you were loved and regarded.
May the churches (and cop cars) keep burning,
Love forever,
an anonymous comrade