Great leaders and visionaries create an image in our lives that we may not fully grasp at the time we see it. When those leaders are cut down and taken from us, we often have trouble comprehending what they were, and only see the instant that the were no longer. That image is burned into the retina of our mind's eye, as if we paused the video in disbelief and stared for hours, days, weeks. The scenes before seem to pale in comparison, the life before seems to take a back seat as we look forever into that single moment, when all that could have been and all that was intersect, and the screen snaps to a single dot in the center of the screen and goes dark, leaving us with an indelible negative seared into our consciousness.

The Promised Land's still just beyond that mountain, brother, and we're all still climbing up. Sometimes it seems like that mountain is getting higher, and sometimes some of us want the rest of us to believe that we're already over it, but we're all still climbing. Some of us have an easier climb, some of us are still fighting about how to climb it, some of us don't even see the mountain, and some of us don't even think that the mountain exists, but it's there. We know you saw what was on the other side, and it must have been beautiful, but we know you came back, and we know you walked all the way back to bottom to help us all along, and we can't forget that and we've got to keep climbing.

...

So keep climbing. Even if you think you don't have a mountain to climb, there are people still out there who do, and believe you me... as long as even one person is still huddled on the side of that mountain, no one's getting into the Promised Land.

-pb