A Letter A Little Late

 I thought of you today.

It was first thing in the morning before the light of reality had seeped through the cracks in my consciousness. For that moment, just a single moment, I anticipated seeing you today. I reviewed the things I had to tell you. I love your big, loud, laugh, the one where you lived in the roar of your laughter. I had something funny to say. 

Then.

I remembered.

You died.

And I grieved you all over again.

So I thought I'd write to you. Because it's hours later and you are still with me. Even in companionable silence. You were there. I never knew that the last time I saw you would be the last time I saw you. I never said what I would have said had I known.

I would have said things differently than what I said at your funeral where I eulogized you. I said what the audience needed to hear. Shared memories that would have been universal, about how you were, and who you were, and the things about you that we'd all miss.

But, I miss you specifically. 

There were things that were uniquely ours.

And it's those things that I would have said to you.

We know each other, I refuse now to use the past tense, well enough for me to be assured that you know what I would have said. And it only occurs to me now, that you didn't know that our last goodbye would be our last goodbye and you never had the chance to take leave of me before you took leave of the world.

I think I know what you would have said.

I know absolutely what I would have wanted to hear.

And now I wonder, how closely those things would match.

Anyway, I wanted to say goodbye to you again because as the day presses on your presence fades behind things I have to do and things I want to do.

So, farewell again.