Now why did you have to go and do that,

Dave? I'm lying to myself when I say that you're in a better place now—a calm place—because I know exactly where you are, and it's anything but calm:

I was in a meadow on a hike yesterday, relaxing in a clearing called Laurel Dell under the gaze of Mt. Tam(alpais). I went there to think; about you? Sure, at least in part. And to handle the things I knew I would have to do to forgive you, the things my mentor had told me to do to release all sorts of voodoo that's probably older than humanity, practiced in some strange primal forms among lesser evolutionary neighbors.

I felt you there and I was comforted. Then I realized I wasn't being entirely new-agey, that there was a statistical probability that atoms from your body represented somewhere near 1 ppo (parts per octillion) of the atoms buzzing around me, incorporating themselves into me with each breath—which inspires an estimated 1.3 x 10^22 gas molecules, or 13000000000000000000000 molecules, to give you a better idea just how much you physically change with each inhale and exhale. Each time you exhale, an equal amount of you leaves you and enters the ether; and as if that's not enough, you is constantly leaking out of your pores, sweat glands, menses, etc.

Your body decomposes, the atoms survive as fundamental dust. Eventually, I will inhale a molecule of elemental nitrogen that was an amino group in a glycine molecule in a polypeptide subunit in a protein in a muscle in your shoulder. Or your abdomen.

Your sizzling brain.

And these interactions—between my current atoms and your former ones—will continue. Forever.

Stretching, opening endless to the sea.