My address book is full of dead people.

Their names, in pen, refuse to be forgotten.
Many of the cards I wrote featured an ampersand, but now, there’s no need. So many duos are now single acts.

None of their deaths were natural.
Tumors.
Cancer.
Addiction.
Car crashes.

None of it makes sense.
We were built for eternity. We were made to live and not die…by Adam’s sin, we are all made guilty and the wages of our sin is death. It wasn’t supposed to be this way - death teaches us that lesson.

They’re dead.
One day, I will be too.
It’s sad, so sad - all of it.
But I can’t bring myself to white out those names, as if that could erase the sting of their absence.

They exist still. In moments, in memories, in photographs and on scraps of paper.