We all suffer when our brightest lights diminish and fade away.

Their time comes, it goes, and then it is the time for someone else to carry the light to show the way.

No one ever really feels that they are ready, or even deserve to be the shining example, but their time comes all the same.

It is fitting that you feel the loss, they earned that from us by giving all that they did.

Their eyes are upon you, and their hands are on your shoulder. Pay tribute to them by continuing to carry the light for those that are yet to come.

An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”