It was an epitaph that could have been written for Finch, except that I’ve written one for him myself:

Theodore Finch—I was alive. I burned brightly. And then I died, but not really. Because someone like me cannot, will not, die like everyone else. I linger like the legends of the Blue Hole. I will always be here, in the offerings and people I left behind.

I tread water on the surface under the wide, open sky and the sun and all that blue, which reminds me of Theodore Finch, just like everything else reminds me of him, and I think of my own epitaph, still to be written, and all the places I’ll wander. No longer rooted, but gold, flowing. I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me.