We miss you, Roger

Roger Merrill

With great sadness I'm writing that our friend Roger passed away on Friday. Over the years, his wife Candi wrote a beautiful and moving blog called Bone Marrow Boogie that documented their lives together while they faced his illness with great courage.

He was a wonderful husband and a delightful friend.  He was kind, funny and bright.  He was an amazing artist. Above all, Roger was a creative thinker who believed everything started with good ideas, and with more ideas the world could only get better. We used to tease him about the little notebook he carried around.  We loved his optimism and energy, his keen artist's eye.

Leukemia eventually took Roger's life, but it never touched his joy and zest for living.  He had tremendous vitality.  We have many beautiful memories of time spent with Roger and Candi. We'll always hear his voice in animated conversations, see him in the garden, sitting at the dining room table, and remember him in all the other places we enjoyed together. Our world won't be the same without him.

But of the many things I loved about Roger, the thing I loved most was how much he loved Candi.

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are...

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.
All is well.

 by, Henry Scott Holland