Dear Melissa

Lisa Smith has written a post to our good friend Melissa Lowen. It starts

Dear Melissa,

It has been several weeks, and some days I still don't believe that you're gone. It is too much of an impossibility that someone so vitally young and alive could somehow not be anymore. And I don't think you'd ever realize how big of a gap you left.

I still feel ill at the fact that I didn't do more. In the rush of preparing to rush off to yet another foreign country, all the funeral details passed me by. I couldn't even find a moment to write of how much I'll miss your steady, gentle, organized and hilarious presence in my life. But maybe the seeming unreality of it all kept me from this moment. I think I'm still in shock. However, I'm writing to you now, with apologies for the tardiness.

I've also added it to my page dedicated to Melissa.

- Peace