Today I feel as though one-third of me has died.  I lost one of the best friends that I have ever known or will ever know to brain cancer.  Jeremiah was twenty-seven years old, Robbie is twenty-six, and I am the youngen of the bunch at twenty-five.

Five minutes before Jeremiah passed away I was in the grocery store parking lot here in Charlottesville with a horrible feeling of unease that had been with me all day when a license plate caught my eye that read, "HAV F8H."  So I am trying to do just that:  Have Faith.

Some of this poem may be recognizable to you all as the starting and ending poem in my story about Jeremiah when I found out he was first diagnosed with brain cancer three years ago entitled, 'The Court.'

But today Jeremiah left us to return home to God and although I cried and wept and have done so all evening long, I finished this poem.

Tomorrow I will also return home to the house across from Jeremiah's where we grew up as kids to be with my friends and family and to reminisce about all of the good times we had throughout the years because him and Robbie have always been my best friends in life:  The three amigos from Phenix, Virginia.  We’ll miss you Bullfrog!

Goodbye my friend
By Jeffrey Pillow
January 19, 2007

Tonight, I shall write
Lest there be a soul who engraves their memory
Into my wretched life, I shall write—
For not a solitary thought escapes me that I shall not pen
For love never dies, nor does the memory of a friend.

And so I ask, I plea for you to read
My friends in mourning whose faith seems weak:
Recall the moments of times gone past
Think of the smiles and memories that last,
Of friends and enemies and the games we used to play
And maybe you have forgotten a few along the way
But with this pen they will be forever etched in time.

Thus, it goes my friend

One day we shall follow your lead
Trampling behind you, leaving our mark—
Our own footprints in the sand
Walking together once more in Heaven hand in hand.

Know the one I knew so well

That in our hearts you will always stay

And come soon enough, we shall all meet again one day

Returning to greet you when our time has come—

To rekindle this love of friendship

As we once knew in youth.

Though I miss you already
I want you to know:

I love you dear friend.
But I do not fret; I do not worry
Nor should you my friends

So if your heart is heavy, weighted down by lead

I ask of you to remember the words Jeremiah said,

“Remember that while things may not always work out

Like we want [them] to; the Lord is with all of us

And nothing bad can happen” when you put your faith in God

And He puts his faith in you.

So quiet your qualm and anger—with the Heavens above

Lose fast any trepidation and anguished tears
With the Lord—my friend, your friend, our friend
The one we love stays; and one day we shall all meet again.

Jeremiah Franklin Hamlett
May 8, 1979 – January 19, 2007