I can't sleep tonight, thinking of my friend. Other than family, I have never lost someone this close to me. I don't know what I'm feeling right now, but if there is a term for confusion, anger, pain and loss all rolled into one, that is it. I can't fathom how someone as good as Adam was could be gone, or how someone who always strove to better himself and those around him could be taken so young. I feel, as illogical as this is, that if whomever set that IED had known how much Adam had done for the Iraqis (Adam had solicited so much in donations the postal service had asked him to cut back at one point because it was making it difficult to process all the mail to his FOB) then maybe he wouldn't have set it. I know that's not the case, and that to the insurgents, an American is an American...that they don't know, or care, if Adam was a true patriot there to do what he thought he should do to help others. All I know is I'll never get a call again just to see how things are going or to congratulate me when I've accomplished something else in life.

Adam had come up to New York one weekend last month and, while I can't remember what it was that I "had" to do that weekend, I realize now it wasn't important enough. People always say that after someone dies...that they wish they had told the person how much he meant to them or tried to spend that little more time with them. It's more true now than I've ever felt it before. With my father, we knew he was going to die and we were able to say our goodbyes and I've never felt that we missed that opportunity. With Adam, I have the faith to know he knows how I...how we all...felt about him, but the regret of knowing that I was never able to tell him what a role model and friend he was to me in person.

I have begun to dread conversations that begin with "Did you know ____?" with classmates of mine because I know how they're going to end. I was talking with a friend of mine tonight and he, who has also lost a good friend, replied, "yeah i know man and unfortunately i feel its just the fucking beginning." I worry this is the life I've chosen. One where it's a crap shoot which of my friends will be like Adam...a memory.

I called some friends back at school. I let the kids who donated money to help supply his soldiers with equipment that he was gone. I let some kids in his old company who never knew him that he was been in A3 too, and that when the First Captain announces, "It is with great regret that I inform you of a fallen comrade..." that he is not talking about someone far removed from them, someone faceless or just a memory. He is a real person. A good person. Someone to be missed and praised, someone they should emulate. And I hope, at the very least, that in that moment of silence, his memory is a tangible, solitary moment wherein Adam is at West Point once more.

I don't understand this, and I don't think I ever will.