These are the words I imagined my departed friend speaking to me in his usual upbeat, motivational speaker tone: "Whassup big man? Don't cry! Be tough. Be tough for my little sister"

Though we drifted apart we were still in each other's hearts. As I embraced his sister to comfort her in her grief, she imparted words that embraced and comforted me. She whispered "you know he loved you very much" A million doves flew out of me carrying little pieces of the hurt. Simultaneously, there was an awkwardness that was clearly the result of he and I having drifted apart.

The moral of this series is don't be taken aback if I should hug you and tell you that I love you. My soul can not endure too many more "if only's" or "what if's". Instead, I hope that you will feel complemented by my desire to be close to you.

When have you last taken in the ocean, the mountains, or a forest? When have you last deeply inhaled a fulfilling friendship or relationship? These are things that you must savor or you will risk forgetting to live. Life is to be lived today. While we plan for fantastical future days that frequently never materialize we must not forsake or trivialize the present. Accentuate the positive today. No matter how small that positive thing is, amplify it as absurdly as you like to the point that it drowns out the negative. It's your prerogative. It's your day. Love it no less than you love the vision that you've created for the future.

If you're gonna blog, how could you debate with yourself about whether or not to write about the loss of one of the best friends you've ever had? But that's what I found myself doing. I guess I was thinking that it would be better to wait until I had digested this a little more, since it was only last night that I found out of his death. For years we were white on rice enough for many people to assume that we were brothers or at least cousins. And while I anticipate the concentrated weirdness that's likely to ensue from those trying to untangle the conundrum they've created by making assumptions instead of asking questions, I would be aggravating my own personal drama if I failed to offer my condolences to his mother and sister.

I guess anyone who's lost someone who was close has experienced the regret of not having said this or that. Well over the 31 years that we knew each other, I think we said quite a bit to each other. And although I have this feeling that we were a few thousand conversations in arrears, I'm happy to have had those that we did have. It's rare when you meet a person with whom no topic of conversation is off limits. It's a shame that we allowed life to slowly seep in to separate us. It happens all the time though. Mounting responsibilities, Time restraints. Finances, competing priorities cause us to distance ourselves from unique situations that have nurtured our expressiveness, imagination, and humanity. Because we voluntarily choose bricks and stones over love and spirituality, we miss invaluable experiences and insights that causes material things to pale in comparison. More often than not we're not very fond of the path to those things we want to accumulate and once we've reached the pinnacle and experience the accompanying anticlimactic fizzle, depression often follows as we realize that those things are not satisfying.