My very dear friend,

I believe it has been over a year since I last bade you my final farewell as you lay peacefully in that intricately crafted casket. I was just thinking of you a while ago as I was driving. There is this song that never ceases to propel my memories back to the days of our friendship; that song was playing in my car today.

I still think of you sometimes. There are many things about your life that inspire me to move on. Your life was relatively short, but you kept the faith and fought the good fight. As you gradually weakened physically, I saw how you summoned the spiritual strength to live on faithfully.

If I could just meet you for a little while now, there are many things I would have so wanted to ask you. What is it like over at the other side? What am I fighting for in life? Is everything I have been taught to believe true? Is death truly the cessation of life, or is it after all just another phase of life itself? You must think I am faithless for even asking such questions. I too often wonder why I have never found the capacity within me to live life in as simple a way as you did.

You lived every day as if it were your last. I was often amused at how you never lost that sense of wonder even as a grown up. I wish I could capture that again for myself. But alas, my own sense of childlike wonder has been dulled by the painful realities of life. And yet, inasmuch as I think my own life is filled with pain, perhaps the pain that graced your life was present in indescribable measure relative to my own. But still, you had a way of smiling gracefully at your lot in life.

I am ashamed to say this, but there is a part of me that envies you. In having departed from this world, you have lost nothing. This world has nothing to offer. I long to be where you are. I know that your family believes you are now caught in the place they call "purgotary", but I believe you are in a place far more beautiful than that. Because you deserve it.

I write to you not because I think you are still to be found somewhere in this world. I write to you because I believe there is a continuity of sorts in our different states of existence. After all, the God who created that place where you now find yourself to be in is the same God who has created the place wherein I continue to exist. I am unsure if this message will ever get to you. But maybe I'm just writing this letter for myself; just to remind myself that I'm thinking of you.

So long, my friend. I long to with meet you again.

Yours most faithfully,
Sherman