JDRF fundraiser

I signed up for the Junvenile Diabetes walk that is being held later this month.  It was 2 years in July since Noah died, but it doesn't feel that long at all.  It made me so sad, to be doing this again, reminding me how ridiculous it is for him to be gone.  When I signed up for the walk, they have a place to write a personal story; this is what I posted~

People think that diabetes is a manageable disease and don't realize how much people suffer with it. My brother, Noah, was diagnosed when he was 14, shortly after our father, who also had juvenile-onset diabetes, died at the age of 67. He coped for many years, but when he reached his 30s, he became discouraged, and he let his health decline. He lived alone, so when he wasn't careful about his insulin, there was no one there to help. He died in July, 2009, of kidney failure secondary to diabetes, at the age of 34.  In his adult life, he came a wonderful photographer, and even won an award at the University of Arizona for a series he did representing his struggle with diabetes. His photos survive him and are some of my most cherished possessions.At his memorial service, I read the last 2 stanzas of Kahlil Gibran's On Beauty:

[Beauty] is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes
and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight.

. . . beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.