Sitting front row at your funeral today, I imagine life without you. Imagine we never met that day on the grass by the cloisters – you in your white jeans with skin to match, me clothed in teenage doubt. The beige-faced pastor who never knew you gamely quotes from his list of platitudes, drawing the same affirming smiles as an astrology reading.

“It doesn’t matter,” you’d have said.

“People bring their own meaning to these things.”

My own list comes to mind. A list of how dull life would have been without you. How dull it could be now, because you’re done here. Clocked out. Expired.

Unbaked dough , scuffed waiting-room floors in public hospitals, conference lanyards on sweaty necks…

Your photo – showing off that wild, highland hair -sits atop the wooden box they put you in. Although you never fit in any box until a few days ago. Did you choose the rose mahogany, or was that your Mum’s choice? She always fell so far from the mark with her desperate Hallmark sensibilities. You always forgave her.

…Roadside astroturf lawns, slip-on shoes, hardwearing carpet, transit hub condos…

The others that love you congregate behind me, packed in orderly rows up to the mezzanine.

Tiers of tears. You’d have laughed at that. You humoured my stupid puns.

But you did always like a little cry, and those powder-blue eyes really shone in salt water. But I know you’d prefer they were laughing.

…Lank haired bureaucrats, policy memos, car parks, data collection…

This list is getting harder. Are there really so few boring things in the world? You’d have had more. We’d have competed. Like the night we drank that punitive white wine and spent hours inventing product names incorporating the word ‘bastard’. A spoon called a ‘soup bastard’, a glass called a ‘drink bastard’. You topped the list with the illegitimate child called a ‘bastard bastard’. Puerile, offensive, opaque to anyone else but us, but kids find entertainment anywhere.

Concrete car parks, yellow Mazdas, this black suit I’m wearing…

The priest is done. Wiping his wet mouth with whatever they call that strange flat scarf he’s got over his cassock. Not sure if that’s what it’s supposed to do, but you have to applaud the practicality.

It’s my time to speak now. He’s introduced me as your best friend, and I’m supposed to box up your meaning to me into a few minutes. I’ve spent hours writing words that usually splash thoughtlessly around friends.

Around you.

But you are not here. Not anymore.

Not any less either, but never any more.

You are gone and life is less.

Hello. My name is…

Bryson Thomas