Three years ago tonight I wrote a letter to a dear friend. In the letter I told him that I would raise my glass and drink a toast to our friendship: to laughter following bad jokes, to late night phone calls, to our various bonding experiences, and to nights talking through our lives under the stars. I ended the letter telling him that I loved him, sealed the envelope, and addressed it. Three days later I slipped it under the wilting flowers in the cemetery, expecting it to be thrown out at some point by a groundskeeper who had no idea how special Justin was.
Although I never thought anyone would see it, Justin's dad found the letter at some point. He spent several days deciding whether it was his place to open it, but ultimately read what I had written. He knew who I was - J and I had lived together for a couple of years even though his parents didn't approve of a girl roommate (and we were just roommates) - but was surprised at what he found. The letter now lives in the box of treasures Justin kept when he was alive, the only letter in there that J didn't put there himself, but that his father thought he would. It was the last letter anyone wrote to him.
I only found out about this a year after it happened. Keith and I were in a restaurant on Lake Belton, the only two people in the place while it was thundering and lightning outside. I had never told Keith about the letter - Justin's father had - but it made him feel good that I had written it. That night we just both sat there at the table for hours in one of the few times that we have ever talked about how much we miss him. And together we cried.
It still hurts that he's gone. It hurts that there is one less person in the world who loves me, one less for me to love. But my sentiments from that letter still stand: we had great times together and I will do my best to remember J and smile. But today, of all days, the world is just a little lonelier.
