The subtraction and it's option

Robert called me and said "I thought you'd still be up." I explain why I go to bed at ridiculously early hours. He asks "Isn't it only 9:30 out there?" I say I have to assume he's right because my clock is in binary. He finds this odd. I explain that when your clock says this...

9:30

My clock says this...

10101:110110

We talk and I go back to bed. I get up to take a picture of my clock and send it to Robert. He texts me back. "You're crazy." I already knew that.

But maybe not. After all, we teach all of our children how to read roman numerals. It's not crazy, but a different way of looking at counting. A new perspective.

I consider the other new perspective I have in life. I now have to live in a world without Nate in it. I ponder this with sadness. Often times I think about how much I would rather live in a world with Nate in it. What would I give for this world?

I imagined one scenario on the way to work this morning. A man came to me and said "Nate will be alive and well and readily available to all who want and need him. The price is that you will be homeless and destitute for the rest of your own life." I reply to the man, "What a terrific bargain!" To trade the finite things one has for someone to be alive is a small price to pay. Unfortunately, no man has made such bargain with me.

Binary to me is another perspective on life. The shock of Nate being gone is also another perspective on life, but totally the opposite. Binary makes me happy. It's another dimension added to my life. It gives me contentment. Nate being gone makes me sad. It is a dimension subtracted from my life. It gives me grief. Grief is the gap between desire and lack of that desire. My will says Nate should be alive, but that is not my reality.

One thing all of my friends and family bereaved by the loss of Nate can agree on is that we have not fully lost him. We all feel that Nate is around us. Not in our preferred form, but watching over us somehow. Still the same good soul we knew him, but not in the exact way we knew him. Protective of his friends to the point where he refuses to leave us behind even in death. It is this part that is left behind that brings me to my conclusion. My choice in an option.

An option is where we choose to walk down one path instead of another in the wood of life.

Sadly, and much against my will, Nate has been subtracted from my life. From the lives of all who knew him. However, I can't change this. And yet, I feel an urge that I believe is an urge from Nate. To attempt, as best I can, to accept this loss and to move forward. To live. It is very difficult to understand this strange new world. At first I felt guilty about being alive. How unfair that I continued on, but Nate didn't. I felt I was insulting him. But that part of Nate that I feel, the part that lingers on shows me I am doing quite the opposite by living. Nate was very much in love with life. I was fond of his MySpace quote. It was a Kurt Vonnegut quote about living as close to the edge as possible without going over. Nate was quite good at that I think. So to not live my life is what is truly the insult to Nate. For a man who understood the importance of all the wonderful things one could experience in life, to lock myself away would be the greatest insult to him I could find.

So, in memory of Nate. To honor him. Because he inspires me....I choose to not only live my life, but to try and make it a tad fuller.

I know in my heart of hearts, this is more than what Nate wants. It is what he cheers for his beloved to do.

I will do my best sir. I will do my best.