When somebody leaves, we sooth ourselves saying that once started, nobody really leaves, that someday there will be a comeback, that kendo is for ever. Those who leave open a wound in need of healing. It might very well be that those things that we repeat to ourselves are, in the end, true. It might be.
Brother Sparrow showed up a day like any other day, and with his small and fast movements he shaped a space of his own. Despite his modest size and apparent humbleness, opinions and judgments were sharply expressed, in few cutting words. It took no time for the rest to check his expression and his tenure, before saying one of those scarcely thought statements that we use in bars, or in a break in keiko. Brother Sparrow had no time to suffer fools, or foolish opinions. We got to check ourselves, and tried to learn some of his precise talking.
Yet the end is nigh, and brother Sparrow left us. We’ll miss him, and then we won’t. In our memory, and probably in his, moments will loose their sharpness, few anecdotes will remain, and then none. If we are not remembered, did we ever existed? They say that to be left behind is to die a little. Perhaps that’s why we do what we do, this kendo of ours full of fast movements and faster thinking, the very opposite of death and oblivion. Yet this what we do, this chosen path, it’s also about death that gives life.
I’ll miss brother Sparrow
