“It’s been my good fortune to share a story with him,” I said, “and that’s all we’ll ever have. There’s no more. Earth is all the heaven we’ll ever know.”
“He’s one of those people. We struggle to accept he’s not twenty. Him not being twenty means that none of us is twenty. Him dying means we all are. That’s what gets everybody – he was always first with everything and now he’s showing us how to die.”
I owed him for, but the sense of duty was there, as well as the love. And as he spoke, I felt for the first time in our lives that our friendship had a final destination.