My best friend died before I had a chance to tell him how much he meant to me. Not a week goes by, that I don’t think of him or see him in my dreams. And if there is one thing I’d want to say to some new friend I might make in this life, is that I truly treasure your “being there” for me.

I see a best friend as the person I would not see for years, but pick up with him as if we’d just spoke on the phone a day earlier. You can’t pull the wool over the eyes of this friend, no matter how successful you might be in your field of work or even wth your spouse. Your closest friend knows all of your secrets, that is, if you’ve been honest and opened up during those tough times when everyone in the world seemed to be against you and not understand how you could have done or not done something 99 percent of ’em could ever acccept or understand about you.

My best friend would understand. Maybe not right away, but after listening to me explain, I’d hear that friend joke and make light of the most somber situation I’d face and somehow it wouldn’t seem as troublesome as before.

“You can’t bullshit a bullshitter” I can hear my best friend say when I’d try to tell him what so many of my newer “so-called” friends would accept without blinking an eye. They’d be too nice to contradict me or present a different point of view out of politeness or worse, to curry favor in a business or work relationship. My friend — of whom I knew since childhood — would see right through the more “adult” philosophy, pscychology or some other “ology” that I’d fool myself in believing worked on “acquaintances,” but never on that kid from my old neighborhood.

My best friend was  there before, during and after my divorce; he was there when I returned home from the war different from what I was but still the same in ways that mattered; he was there when I changed from one job to another seeking some “calling” in life, only to advise me that nothing really mattered but staying true to myself — staying true to the man this boy had always hoped to become in the eyes of my friend.

Damn it, Johnny. Why did you have to die? Why did you leave before I could let you know how much of you is still a part of me and always will be? Maybe it was orchestrated for me to tell you now why you were my best friend and how much I miss you.

I miss you, my greatest friend, my best friend. And we both know that’s no bull.