To the Other Side Without You

The river of grief is raging, deep and wide.

We're all caught in it, floundering to get to the other side.

Some are swimming hard but spent from the effort,

Others are bobbing up and down like a cork tossed in violent water lost without purpose,

Still others are sinking to the bottom wondering whether they will ever rise again to take a normal breathe.

So many of us touched by your life.

So many of us overwhelmed by your loss.

You rallied us and led the charge when each Challenge was launched, putting us in the spirit to write and submit.

Even when your belief in ever winning one flagged, you still wrote and entered and inspired us to do the same.

Together we ran at the insurmountable as though we could stake our poles with our writer's flags at the top of Winners' Peak in the Vocal Challenge Mountains and claim Victory.

On announcement days, you popped into the groups with the rest of us to anxiously await Challenge results.

To help us all pass the time waiting, you made icebreaker posts that helped us share and get to know one another.

Once winners were announced, you critiqued.

It wasn't always fluffy words or accolades.

Brutally honest at times perhaps, but you meant no harm.

The moment I saw the depth of your character was when one of your posts touched a nerve and someone went off on you....hard.

It went into a deeply personal attack on your character.

But you didn't rise in kind and respond in anger.

Instead, you took the hit and accepted her weigh and measure of you without complaint.

It would have gutted me. Sent me reeling. Whatever effect it might have had on you, it never came back there in written form. It stayed in your quiet musings.

I loved your work. I read everything you shared in the short time our journey intersected. "Cooper's Circle" hit me like a Twilight Zone episode. I didn't know if you would be familiar with that show in the UK since I'm American and easily 20 years your senior. But you knew.

I'd like to think you would smile and maybe even laugh when I say, "You were a man of 'ewe' words." Your story about Petite Vache and the sheep funeral had me crying in the dark as I read winding down for bed. It stuck with me identifying with the pain of loss with the feral colony we tend.

Other insightful stories about you and your life was The Door Home, the Antique Store, and about Marla and your loss of her for being a sheep killer. Seeing bits of your life journey through your writing and then your presence in the writing groups intertwined us all.

You sometimes triggered critical dialogue, but you provoked far more commentary that built a sense of community. And your loss has deeply effected us. Tossing us into the river of grief to find our way to the other side without you.

You are greatly missed by many Tom Bradbury. I think you would be pleasantly surprised at the positive effect you as a solitary man, far from home, tending rescued sheep, adoring chickens, drinking dandelion lemonade, made on those who knew you whether near by or far and away.

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It took me a while to gather myself enough to write these words about Tom. As I read the outpouring of stories by others, it brings it home just what the world has lost with Tom's passing and how much I missed by knowing him for only a short time.

Story Cover Photo Credit: I tried to use the story link to be my cover photo but it wouldn't save the story because it wanted a "video" link. :( Below is the source of the photo and one of Tom's more recent stories.

Tributes to Tom by other friends who knew him: