Almost four months now since you were ruthlessly killed.
Precious Brian, the brother of my soul.
How horrific for me!  The only dead body I ever saw--before
The undertaker's work--had to be the body of my dearest friend ever.
My lifetime's very best friend.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I have loved so many people, so much, in my life, Brian.
But of all the people I loved and love, I love you more.
I love you the most, my companion of six fleet years,
That now multiply in my grim dying reality, with many sorrowful tears.
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As I face this most terrible and horrible way of dying at my cursed end,
I recall all the people I loved and love.  My mother, grandmother,
My father, my brother, my two sisters--
Cousins, aunts, uncles--
Many relatives, and so many of my lifetime's friends--
My childhood girlfriends, and my later girlfriends,
And my lovers, in long-term love affairs, when I became a young man--
And my former wife--
My love for each of them remains, and will, as long as breath in me will be.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Having remembered all of them, then I remember you again, Brian.
Do you remember the little tag we had hanging on the chains of our keys?
Forever Friends.  Yes, Brian, you and I--very best friends--friends forever.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
My world must yield, to dust or ashes, years that should have had more life;
As you, so unjustly and undeservedly, have already had your heart stilled.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I'm missing you, my friend.  Aching with loneliness. 
I'm sick of always having to explain that you and I were not gay.
But many people cannot seem to get it that friends can love so much,
Platonic friends.  In so many ways, Brian, you were like a little boy.
In many ways I filled a sort of fatherly role with you.  I took care of you,
Doing the things for you that you could not do.  I also taught you how
To do some things for yourself; but mostly, I helped heal your mind,
Along with the therapist I found for you, to free yourself from depression,
At least most of the time; and to learn how to love your life, and live now.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But even though I had compassion for you, and filled a fatherly role,
It was as equals, as friends, that we found most of our friendship joy.
We were bonded as brothers.  The two of us, so much the same,
Knowing each other so well, liking so many of the same things in life--
And each one having new things in life to teach the other to appreciate--
We were truly the very best of friends, and brothers of the soul.
We enjoyed each other's company.  We did things together. 
We were so happy to be friends, sharing time, things, and activities.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Now most of my time I am alone.  None of my other friends fill your place.
Who will watch TV or movies at home with me?
Who will spend quiet time, reading together, at a book-store or at home?
Who will, at any time, just like that, share with me coffee, hot chocolate,
Or a good green tea?  Who will go with me,
Now, to the Sci-Fi Center?  Who loves comic books as much as I do?
Who will go with me to the comic-book stores?
Who will break with me two fortune cookies in Chinese restaurants?
Who will watch movies with me, the old ones that you and I loved?
Who will go with me to the Poetry Readings?  Who will go with me
To the coffeehouses, or to the book-stores--or to all the old haunts--
That you and I shared so often? 
My very best times of happiness are buried, Brian, in your coffin.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Who now would be happy to spend their time with my time, every day?
Now my heart is haunted, by your loss.
What you have lost, stolen away from you; and what I have lost,
By losing you.  Also, I'm afraid. 
I don't know what is going to happen to me.
I know I'm scared.  I know I'm sad. 
I know sometimes it nearly drives me mad.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I know my doctor may not be able to help me.  But I still hope. 
I still hope my doctor can and will prolong my life.
I hope he will have compassion for me, and that he knows some ways
To make my threatened life less brief, and lengthen out my living days.
I have to hope, you see--or I would break down myself, my friend.
I hunger fiercely for more of my birth-promised life,
Before my life comes, eventually, to its end. 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But I know that my life is going to end.  Sooner or later. 
I just want it to be later!  I ferverently hope my doctor's work will give
More time of life to me to dream and love and write and learn and live.
If so, I will be more satisfied, and face death with less sorrow and regret;
Although, when I look at my death, I always feel aversion and fear.
All I know is life, my life--in this terrible but wonderful world--I have here.
I have now.  I have had for all my flying years. 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I do not know death.
Will I be snuffed out forever, into total nothingness?
That is what Stephen Hawkings has just declared he believes.
Will I be sent to some place of terrible pain?
Will I find some spirit plane?  Will I become a phantasm, or a ghost?
Or will I reincarnate as someone else, without memory of my now me?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Let me recall, Brian, your childlike innocent bright strong faith,
And lean on it a little, my friend.  Before I end like a smoke-ring wraith.
Will I have the life after death in which you believed? And, in the end,
For which you daily and nightly hoped and prayed? 
Or will I, like a fleeing shadow, fade into eternal shade?
Will I find a heaven of happiness?  Or rebirth into a Paradise earth?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
I cannot know the answer.
I only know I've been told I have a death sentence now, from the spread
Of my horrible evil cancer. 
I only know that I probably will soon be dead.
No--I know something else, too, my friend; I go to the somewhere,
Or to the nowhere if so it be, where you have gone before me.
I hope that we can embrace again as brothers of the soul.
My mother sometimes would sing a song that had these lines:
"My buddy.  My buddy.  Your buddy misses you."
Brian, my best buddy--your best buddy misses you!
I'm missing you more than I ever missed anyone, with deep sorrow.
Too soon, you've lost your last today;
Too soon, I will lose my final tomorrow.
I love you, Brian.  
Or, to put as you sometimes used to say to me: I love you, you know. 
And of all those I loved and love,
Brian, the best friend of all my life--I love you more, my friend.
I love you the most.

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Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka (thanks to Luna Marie) Mr. Poet
Written on Monday, May 16, 2011  7:26 pm PDT
65 degrees F.  Humidity: 18%  Forecast: overcast
Copyright (C) 2011 by Michael LP.  All rights reserved
(I still copyright my writings, for my estate)