An Apology, a Bit Late

When you broke my best friend's heart at age 16, my mother joked that karma would come for you. "May a tree fall on his head," she'd candidly thrown out there, initially talking about OJ Simpson, but also saying it about you when we brought up your name while we sat in the car cracking up. The next day, in chorus (it was after the spring concert, when chorus class becomes a study hall) Jamie and I sat together in the auditorium drawing pictures of trees falling on people's heads, not because we actually wanted a tree to fall on someone's head, but because the thought of a tree falling and specifically landing where a person stood was such a random thought that we couldn't help being amused by it. I caught wind that somehow a drawing of a tree falling on your head was passed around. That was never my intention. We never intended to make you feel like you were, to the rest of the world, better off dead. It stopped being funny and thirteen years later, I'm even annoyed that we did that in the first place. To joke about something bad happening to someone...why?... because of a broken heart? We shouldn't have taken that joke so lightly. I don't know if that effected you at all or the possible toll it could have taken in addition to many things, I am sure, but now, with your soul at rest, I realized I've blown absolutely every chance I'll ever have to apologize and now that I'm writing to a dead person, I can't apologize enough.
I wish your life had taken a different course, though I know you were likely just partaking in the advantages life can offer someone in your shoes. Things get carried away so easily.
If you never broke Jamie's heart, I'd maybe have known you better. Though, it could be said that if you hadn't, she and I wouldn't have become close again. In a group of "friends" where I didn't realize were so messed up, she was an ally. So thank you for breaking her heart, actually. She recovered just fine, as I'm sure you did, too, from our crude attempts at creating cartoons.
You were funny. A real smart-ass, and I mean that in the absolute highest regard. You could have been a comedian, and if you'd gone that route, no doubt you would be one of the greats.
Could have been...
You were...
You are...
gone.

May your body rest in peace, may your soul go on to greater things.

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou

I'll remember a smart ass with intimidating intelligence.