Letter from Lauren I have been struggling with how to say many things since December 11, 2001. I have seen and heard the words spoken and written about Ben with so much love, by so many people, and I have often wanted to add my own, to share the Ben I knew with all of you who have so graciously shared him with me. And I suppose I have been a bit jealous, a bit greedy about my memories of him, absurdly afraid that speaking them, sharing him, meant losing him. I know this is not true, but I am still afraid. For a year and a half I have been struggling to articulate the horrible, sickening weight of his absence from my life ñ the necessary counterpart to the beautiful energy of his presence ñ but you are exactly the group that does not need this explained. You cannot know it any more clearly than you already do. My most cherished memory of Ben is the moment I fell in love with him. It was at about 2am, the late-night hours of the day I returned home from my first semester of college. After games of bowling (I could sometimes compete with him, even beat him, I think, but that was before he got Homer, his own bowling ball) and pool (I maintain that proprietorship of a personal pool table gives one an unfair advantage), a small group of us made our way to the beach below his house. I had a somewhat absurd desire to reach the waves that night (as though they would be gone in the morning) that Ben was happy to indulge. I had missed the beach so much over the last four months, but the biting December wind (bless you, Newport) kept driving our little company into momentary shivering huddles, and we never made it. But that was the night, as we crowded around in a futile effort to block the wind, that I let my head fall on to Benís shoulder and discovered what remains to this day the safest and gentlest place I have known. I donít know if it is selfish of me to write these things; I leave it to you to decide. In the months after he died, I kept trying to figure out whether I had a ìrightî to love him as much as I did, and still do. I am still learning that people can never be loved too much, or by too many people. I deplore my memory for the specifics it entirely fails to hold on to, and so what I can add to the songs of life and friendship about Ben is merely a depth of feelingÖthe omnipresent love and loss that makes my knees weaker, my eyes wider, and my gratitude for life and death a beautiful mystery I can hardly hope to contain. The only words that come to mind every time I try to write about Ben are very simple: I love you, and I miss you, Ben.