Pain too fresh
9:09 p.m.

Dear Christopher,

I'm writing this letter to you because I can't mail it. You're dead. You would be 14 years old this year if you hadn't died the same week of your fifth birthday. I want to say I'm sorry I didn't go to your funeral. At the time I thought it was a horrible ritual and I knew I couldn't stand it. But it was a tribute to you and your little-boy sweetness, for the life lost that we all loved, lost to tragedy, lost to the fire. For the little body that suffered and suffered that horrible week until they finally let you go.

I saw a movie, "We Were Soldiers", and it made me cry. The part where the guy gets all burned, it was so horribly real, it ripped away all of the years between then and now and brought it all back fresh to me and there I was, slumped and sobbing in the theater, thinking of you, crying for you in a way that I had never done. It was all suddenly so real, and that seems so cliche since it was only a movie. But I loved you like you were my own brother, not just my cousin, and then you were gone and I buried the pain. Isn't it amazing how it can be so fresh after so long? I miss you, buddy, that's what I want to say, and I wish I could see the boy you would be now. I wish I could see the man you would have made.

I'll never forget you.

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