i am not there, i did not die

I am writing this to you, RMM, knowing that you will never read it.

There are so many things I want to say about the brush we had with each other's lives.  About the dance of ideas shared, the common recognition of troubles scaled, of simple joys experienced.

I know so little about you but I knew these truths: that you loved your family beyond measure, that you treated people with love and respect, that you had wild schemes and deep ideas about how life could, should, might be lived.

I know that you had a tattoo on your calf that made me laugh, it was so perfect and so perfectly unexpected; I'm willing to bet you loved the reaction you got to it.

I remember the nights you gave me a lift home.  We talked about so much and I came to realize how much you loved people, what a huge and gentle heart you had.  And I wanted you to know this; I desperately wish that somehow you had managed to hold on, that somehow you had managed to see a glimpse through that black, all-encompassing fog to a life on the other side.  Because it would have come.  It would, I promise. Eventually.

And what makes me saddest of all is this: that there were so many people at your memorial. So many people who loved you, for whom there were so many memories of happy times shared with you.  And I am left wondering this: if you had known all this, if each of these people could have somehow shown you what a huge hole your leaving would leave in their lives, of how much you were valued, of how much you were loved would you still have done it? Would you still have been able to do it?

And there is a tiny whisper, deep, deep down, "yes".

Not because I knew you so incredibly well but because I know this disease, this demon:  I recognize it in all it's ugly, rotting, all-pervasive slimy form.  It's a fucking awful thing to struggle with and worse to die from.

You will be missed RMM, you made a difference to me, to my life and to many others.  RIP.