Dear John,
I went to your visitation tonight. “Visitation” feels like such the wrong word for it. Maybe it should be ‘viewing’ or something like that. I’m sure the subject has been debated by better minds than mine.

So there you were.

It didn’t look like you. It did, but it didn’t. You were never that tan; your lips weren’t that pink. I do not envy the undertaker’s profession. Perhaps it is a good thing, this disconnect between what I see before me and the mental image I carry of you in my head, smiling at church. It is as if to say, “It’s okay; he’s not here.”

I saw Chris. She looked better, more composed, than I could hope to under similar circumstances. She said you really loved us, and I did my best not to get choked up in front of her.

Some of us are taking care of the leaves out at your place, so don’t worry about that.

I stood in front of your coffin and told you how much you meant to me, how I wished I could have given back to you as much as you gave to me. Thank you. Why is it that we don’t have special occasions in life where you can tell people how much they mean to you while they’re still here? No, we’re just left with these feeble mumblings to a vacated corpse. There should be something like that, you know? Like: ‘Life Day’ or something.

But, no. That’s not the way it works out, is it? Even when we see it slowly coming. Cancer took away your fine golf swing, then it took your appetite, your breath and then your life.

And what are we left with? We’re left with the part I hate:

Goodbye.