To a Deceased Client

Dear Mark,

I miss you. I am sorry you were in so much pain. Should I be glad you are not in pain anymore? Isn’t that what everybody says?

Is death the only avenue out of pain?

I miss the work we had planned to do together, the vision you had for your book and how you were going to use it as your platform as a motivational speaker

I miss your excited delivery, the breathless way you spoke about your life. The exuberant highs and the gritty lows.

Your resonant voice was so full of adventure and expectation.

It’s just too damn bad, but who am I to judge what your life should have been.

After you became ill, I waited for three years for you to be ready to resume our collaboration. How did those years serve me? Were they wasted years?

Was I deluded to wait that long? Looking back it certainly seems like it. Was I just cooling my heels so you could pay me to resume? Was it just greed on my part? No, there was love too.

Really there was more to it. I loved your story. I loved listening to the appalling risks you took and still you came out on top. I loved that you wanted to work with me. You were adamant that it must be me.

And you were wealthy, at least when we started working together. I foresaw prosperity for myself in the dreams you had for your own future.

Then the medical bills started piling up and whittled away at your affluence. Still you had great plans.

“I’m going to beat this,” you said with vigor and conviction. Right up to the week you died.

I believed you. Or I wanted to believe you. And then a brief conversation with your wife Kim showed me how deluded I was, in fact, your whole family was stupefied with amazement and grief.

I miss you, Mark.

I can’t wait to talk with you again.