Dear Friend,

In two weeks, it will be two years since you died.
I still find this unbelievable.

Sometimes I forget.
Sometimes, walking down the street, I'll see a man with a similar stride or build or haircut, and the thrill of you races up my spine- lighting my heart and face with that certain silly joy that is you, and always you...and then the smack, the crash, the recognition of a stranger and that terrible remembering.  
It couldn't have been you.
It won't be you again, anytime, ever.  At least not this time around.

And then it is heartbreak, all over again. It is the phone call that I got while driving down the freeway at breakneck speed.  It is the raft overturned, the chaos, the horrible moment of truth that I was not there for, but that lives in my imagination.  It is a sobbing that threatens to unbind my ribs from their cage, my chest cannot contain the raging river of grief that fills me.

When I got off the phone that day, I howled.  I shouted and screamed.  I made horrible, animal sounds that scared even me. 
And now?  Now, I cry quietly.  Hold back.  Somehow shame my grief into feeling old, feeling past it's time, as if the "use-by" date could expire on such things.

But grief is not linear, Friend, and neither is my missing you.  Some days it is the fiercest thing.

And it still baffles me, how one can lay such beautiful plans, and unexpectedly, suddenly not be alive to live them.  How an entire lifetime of dreams disappears in an instant.
How you, You, can still be gone, still be dead.  That this is true.  That this is not changing.
That you are not bursting-out from around some future corner, laughing at our tear-stained faces, howling, exclaiming that you've fooled us again! Ever joking, ever Trickster, You.

And so, instead, I live with a cruel and hopeful forgetfulness.  And a still sometimes unbearable truth.

I love you.  I miss you.
This is true and unchanging.
I love you.  I miss you.
You are always remembered, always cherished.
We love you.  We miss you.
You STILL make us laugh, even in our grieving.

Until we meet again,