"I'm in repair. I'm not together, but I'm getting there"

Dear Richard,

I so badly need to write this and the only way I can get it all out is through a letter. To you. A letter that you’ll never read, but one that I’ll write again and again because its how I’m positive its all real.

Trying to comprehend that you’re actually gone is a completely foreign action for me. I’ve never actively felt the loss of anyone in my life, and I realize now how fortunate I was for that. How fortunate we all were for that.

I’ve never been good at keeping up with people. I let people reach out to me over and over before I start to try, and I’ve never been more aware of that now. We haven’t kept in the best touch the last year, but never once did I consider you anything less than a friend. You were the epitome of a stand up guy. You were hands down one of the most intelligent, caring, and genuine people I’ve ever had the fortune of knowing. I rarely, if ever, told you how much I admired those qualities in you. You treated each moment as an incredible adventure, and you were right about that. You had a noticeably positive effect on people just by being around, and I only hope that you knew of even a fraction of the love for you that everyone had, and will forever have.

Tonight at your memorial was the first time all day that I was able to remember all the hilarity that ensued any time you were present. The first time I met you, you gave me this up-down look and said "So you're this Kelly Fine I hear so much about. Well i'm Richard. And I think we'll be friends." And we were. And your giving nature is something I’ll carry with me forever.

This feels like a giant tidal wave of perspective over, and over, and over. I hope that all of those you’ve impacted—more people than anyone could have realized—can take away from this horrible situation a lesson in love. I hope I can be more like you. I hope that I’ll remember to tell people how much they mean to me, and often. I hope that your sense of adventure will continue to live on in the hearts of your friends. I hope that we can all learn to forgive the little things, because if we're to learn anything from this it’s that you never know how much time you’ll have.

I can’t stop thinking about the unfairness of it all- no one should die at 19. No one should lose a friend, a son, a brother. But it happens, and it happened, and while grasping that is one of the hardest things that any one of us has ever had to do, I know that eventually, we’ll all be okay. Because we have to be. And because from up in the dance party that I’d like to imagine is your heaven, I think it’s what you’d want for us.

Everyone on the street looks like you. I don’t know if that’ll ever stop, but I hope it doesn’t. Because I’d like to believe that every person has a little bit of you in them.

I miss you already. I’m so much better to have known you.

Kelly Fine

p.s. We all wore yellow in honor of your birthday today. It's definitely the sexiest color.