He had done this about a thousand times before.  In fact, he had done it so much, it became routine; It almost didn’t bother him anymore.  You may think of him as heartless, but in this job, you can’t let It distract you.  Yet as he stared at the flickering computer screen, a blank document stared back at him.  What could he say?  There were no words.  He had known this man for years; he had been like a brother to him.  They’d been through everything together; they both traveled, fought, and grieved over their fallen brothers.

He knew he should be able to say a lot about him, but the words couldn’t come into his mind.  He only saw the face of a young man of twenty five, with buzzed brown hair and eyes that were the color of ash.  He remembered when they first met; they hadn’t liked each other at first.  There wasn’t a particular reason for it, yet they had locked eyes and instantly known they would be competitors.  That had been before his own accident.  After the man saved his life, they had become the best of friends.

Memories of their time together flashed before his mind.  On a short leave, he had been welcomed to stay at home with the man’s family.  His friend had not had siblings, but he did have two eccentric parents.  The father was rather quiet, stoic and gruff.  Yet once you appealed to his greater interest of baseball, he became an open book.  The man’s mother had been the complete opposite; she was bubbly, always chattering away about simple things, always making sure you were well-fed under her roof.  However, if you tried to talk to her about more important matters, she’d quickly change the discussion topic.

He recalled the man’s slobbery bulldog, Winston.  When he had visited, the dog had plodded over to him at a slow, lethargic pace.  Wherever Winston went, a trail of drool followed.  When the dog had approached him, it sniffed him carefully.  Winston had given a short growl before proceeding to gnaw on his shoes.  They all laughed.

He smiled faintly at the memory; he felt his throat tighten.  A numbness took over his body, and his eyes felt heavy.  What could he say?  What should he say?  It’s impossible to explain how he felt, impossible to type anything worth typing without spiraling into a vast pit of despair.  The flickering computer mocked him.
“Oh, what a great friend you are!  You can’t even write a decent letter for your friend!” it seemed to say.

He knew that the cursed computer screen was correct.  What good was he?  How much of a friend had he really been, if he couldn’t even write a decent letter?  But no words would come.  In the back of his mind, he reminded himself that in this job, you can’t let It bother you.  Reluctantly, with the looming presence of guilt and sorrow, he began to write in the standard format: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Everhart...”

Thousands of miles away and about a week later, a woman walked to the end of her driveway, her hand shuffling through the mailbox.  It was a pleasant day, and she hummed quite happily to herself.  She walked back to the inside of her house, stopping at the kitchen counter.  Still humming, she shuffled through the mail.  After casually tossing aside a few bills and magazines, her eyes fell on a rather important looking envelope.  Her humming stopped.

As she opened the envelope, and scanned the first sentence, tears welled up in her eyes.  Her throat tightened as she uttered a gasp.  Leaning onto the countertop for support, she was suddenly aware that the center of her universe had left her forever.  Every tear became a plea, for her to see him one more time; a plea that this couldn’t be true, so that she would not have to explain to her husband.  She could not bear to see his face.  As the tear drops splattered against the officially stamped envelope, she knew things would never be the same again.