Barosus

... .;^~`

i've been away from dA for awhile and i was sad to hear that you've passed. i don't remember how much we actually conversed over the years, but you featured many great pieces, and you helped support the literature community here - for that, i'm grateful to have known you. you'll be missed.

Still thinking about you...

We miss you, friend.

Good morning friend, Happy Birthday!, Big Loves!🎂❤️.

Happy Birthday.

There are birthdays that are no longer counted in candles,
but in memory.
In quiet gratitude.
In the way someone’s presence still lingers in the spaces they once filled.

You are not forgotten.
Not today. Not ever.

Thinking of you - and of those who carry you forward with love.

Leaving this tribute to you here... I still find myself talking about you, both to people who knew you and people who didn't have the honor of talking to you on here...

Barosus connected everyone in the Literature community by just being friendly. He was a really cool person who genuinely loved people but suffered from health problems, so he had to spend most of his time at home. He used to have a beautiful singing voice, but he needed a feeding tube, if I'm not mistaken, and it wrecked his vocal cords. That's why he used a frog as his avatar... because he said he sounded froggy. But Barosus wasn't an ordinary frog, he was a magical one, he said. And he wrote a lot about magic... loved fantasy like Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis' works.

We talked a lot about what it's like to be a Christian artist/writer who likes fantasy a lot. Sometimes, those things don't seem to mix well, and it can feel like being a round peg in a square hole. But it made perfect sense to us and was a little odd that the groups we belonged to sometimes seemed at odds with one another. We talked about music we liked (he really liked Skillet and some other bands). He was a really decent dude. But more than all those things, he just supported people. He was a volunteer in the Lit community and went out of his way to appreciate and give specific praise to works he liked to read.

For many of us writers, words of encouragement are our love language. He was generous with words of encouragement. And for many of us writers, there are things that could drag us down if we let them, because we're sensitive people. He gave us the double blessing of encouragement paired with hope. I know it helped me keep going in a hard time, and I'm sure it helped many others.