Hey Man,

I didn’t want to contact you like this.
Letters to the dead are really just letters
to the living from the living,
trying to reconcile with what we regret.
If what I want to say is so important, why did I wait until now?
Why had I lost all contact with you for the past decade?
You see? I told you. Regrets.

I guess I wrote you off sometime in my past,
drew a line and placed you on the other side;
time just continued to pass. Sentiments would arise,
but I never took action to reconnect,
just buried you prematurely
and tried not to think about it too much.

I heard you stopped by my parent’s house a couple of times
while you were visiting the old neighborhood.
I wish I could have been there, or got a chance to hear your voice once more.
I guess we never know when we are experiencing the last of something, or someone.
We just assume we have a choice in how our lives proceed.
It’s easier to believe that we have some form of control over what happens to us,
so we put the important things we aren’t ready to face off to the side,
to be attended to later… on someday…later.

I’ve thought about our friendship so much since I got the news of your passing.
We had many good times. I was happy and I believe you were happy too.
There were some hard times as well, real times,
blows to the heart, loss of breath times, bleeding times.

I heard about how it happened.
You were just doing the same shit we always did,
but the body can’t take living like that forever.
I think it was an accident.
I don’t believe you meant to do it. I feel bad.
It haunts me how you can consciously make decisions
that invite your own death without realizing that you’re doing it.

There is so much more I want to say to you.
There is so much more I want to say to you that won’t fit into words,
that I can’t constrain into speech or confine to a single letter.
So I’ll just keep talking to you from time to time,
wherever I’m at, whatever I’m doing, however I may be remembering you.

I hope the afterlife isn’t cold. I don’t like to think of you cold.
Wherever you are, I hope you can still be warmed by love.

Your Friend.