Goodnight, Sweet Prince

M has, unfortunately, disappeared.  It has been weeks since any sort of contact from him.  While it may be too early to call it, I think that it's time to give up hope.  M, this is your early eulogy.

I never really liked you.  I didn't trust your rules.  They seemed too arbitrary.  Too subject to change.  You even posted that they had been wrong in the past.  But you admitted that they could be wrong.  You admitted that you were human, and that you could err.  That's something I can't admit freely, because if I do, it means that my entire purpose suddenly amounts to nothing.  You had the gumption to admit that you were wrong, and I respect that.

I may not have liked you or your rules, but I listened to you, to an extent.  I learned from your mistakes.  I respected you.  I still think of you as a mentor to me.  A bit of a paradox, not liking you, but still calling you my mentor, huh?  I guess that the student always thinks he knows better than the teacher.  Maybe I do.  Maybe I don't.  But either way, I became one of your students.

I hope I'm wrong.  I hope you're fine.  But it's getting to the point where we haven't had contact in a long time.  Not even an "I'm alive, don't worry about me."  So this is my eulogy for you.  If you're alive, I'm terribly sorry.  This isn't a eulogy, it's just some post about how much I respect you.  But just in case you've gone to that big, tentacle-free land in the sky, I'm going to crack a bottle for you.  I hope it was quick and relatively painless.

I don't drink, so I grabbed something from the java place on my campus.  Join me friends, in raising a glass, mug, thermos, or whatever you have.  I've got a little monument I've made to you.  Just a small little grave off in the corner of campus somewhere.  I'll share some of this with you...you know, pour some out for you.  It's a hazelnut latte.  I hope that's okay with you.  That'd be kind of embarrassing if I honored you with a drink you hate.  But it's the thought that counts, right?  I'm sure you won't mind.

...

Mmm.  Yep.  That there's some good fucking coffee.