You're Still Here

Dear Zach,

    This is my second letter, I know I won't receive a response, yet I keep praying that someway, somehow you'll let us know, let me know that you're okay. I know you must be, there's no way a beautiful soul like yours couldn't be. But the silence is still deafening. I almost called you the other day, just out of habit to ask you to come hang out with us. Knowing you wouldn't answer was a little overwhelming.

    I'm trying to step up and look out for her, but you know how hard this has been on her. She thinks about you every day. She dreams about you at night, and she tries to drink you away and just ends up in a deeper hole than before. I'm trying to keep it together for everyone that relied on you. I'm just not you. It's not the same. You were so much better at this than I am. You have a way about you that's just so calming. I could look at you, and your little sideways smile or your not so subtle words, or even your unsolicited compliments, they always just made me forget why I was upset.

I just wish I could've done that for you.

   The irony is that everyone ran to you for comfort. Everyone looked to you to be the strong one, the one who had it all together, and now that we're here without you, we don't know who to turn to. Sometimes being happy and acting like nothing happened feels wrong, but I know that's not how you would have wanted it. I feel silly for being so upset about this, when you had much closer friends and family of course. Yet there's still this strange questioning void inside me. I feel like you were trying to tell me something the last time we spoke, and even though I try, it's hard to convince myself that there still wasn't anything I could have done.

   There's so much more than I want to say to you, and to ask you, I just wish I could. We miss you so much, though I'm sure you already know that. I hope it's everything you dreamt it would be, and that you don't even remember the pain and the suffering. I hope that one day, when it's my time, that you'll meet me at the gate, and that we'll talk for hours, not remembering any of this. Until then, fly high sweet angel. At least it's good to know we have you looking out for us. So in that sense, nothing has really changed..