Brian, I am sorry that I didn't know you as well as I'd have liked to. I remember what I knew of you very well. You were unremittingly kind and always had a very earnest, bright smile to spare for me, even when your words were quiet and few. I remember seeing your art and thinking that someday I'd probably see it hung on a wall in a gallery, or, more likely, see a photo in the newspaper depicting it hanging on a wall in a gallery. Your art tended to reflect you and gave me the impression that I knew you better than I did.

When my father died, the first friend I called was Seth, who was for his own reasons unable to respond as I needed him to. The second friend I called was Nate, and not because he was secondary to me, but because I didn't wish to give him the weight of another loss to deal with, even if it was not his loss. He had known my father. Everyone had, since my parents welcomed my friends to our house at all hours. My father liked to come and tell everyone the worst and most controversial jokes that his students had told him, to make them laugh, and if they didn't laugh loud enough, my mother would compensate by laughing louder. Sometimes my father would even subject you and my other friends to his music in the hopes of educating you, although you all and I certainly gave him plenty of our own to hear, and he took be amused or simply bemused by. Anyway, you were all welcome, and you liked my family, and we liked you.

Nate knew what to do. He came right away to the hospital and held my hand as I wept. The next day, he brought you to my house, and you asked what the two of you could do. I said, "Come with me to the funeral and sit with me and my mom. I need you all there." Brian, you came dressed like a dandy in your magenta suit and hat, with the black carnation pinned to the lapel. You were somber without wearing black. You were striking and creative even then. You hugged me, my mother, my uncle, my father's best friend, everyone. Everyone got time and words of condolence. You put your heart out there. I didn't know you well, but it meant a lot that you were the one Nate turned to to help him deal with what that must have stirred up for him. Nate is a very good judge of character, so I feel that I know you more because of his high opinion of you.

You were also the one who came to lie beside me on Nate's floor when we are were drunk on wine together, saying, "Is this being drunk, then? I've never been drunk before..." You giggled, and I smiled. You turned an innocent face to the world and always showed interest in what you didn't already know, even something so mundane as getting punchy on wine.

You had just moved to Kansas City not too long before with your girlfriend Heather when I was planning my birthday party. It had been a while since I or any of us had seen you. Brian, I am so sorry I forgot to invite you. And I wish that I had. That was the night you were killed, shot to death by a mugger when you were taking out your wallet to give it to him and he thought you were pulling a gun. I thought for so long about how me inviting you might have saved your life. I am so sorry I forgot about you when I could have changed that. But maybe I couldn't have changed that. We'll never know. I will always wonder, and I will always remember your face as you turned it to me to smile and say, "That's interesting! I hadn't known that."