From Amie Ferris Rotman

Max:

It was not really until your funeral – when two hundred people moved in a surreal silence alongside Queen's Park – that I realised your absolute absence. I missed you terribly.

Phoebe called me the day you died, her voice shattered and audibly marked, when I was picking up my luggage in Heathrow from a long trip to Russia. Her words of your death covered me in a sharp unforgiving pain that I will never forget. My ridiculously overweight luggage felt like a mere feather in the swamp of pointlessness she conveyed, and I felt so empty. On the way home, through the taxi car's window, glorious London had ground to a halt – you and your smile were gone.

Afterwards, at your memorial football match, your friends' usual discord was hampered and weakened by a tremendous force that drove deep into my veins. You are now now forever missing from our park, where I grew up with you. I have never seen Queen's Park so empty. Yes, there were children and other Max's playing football – but at that moment, starched by a rare blue sky, a vein from my childhood idyll disintegrated.

This absence wanted to strike a deal with me: know this and know your Queen's Park life is now incomplete and marred with holes. I can hear your voice across my body – dark, husky and ever-joking. Darling childhood friend, you marked my earliest existence by just being you, and I am so pained you are gone.

I hope to take care of Rachel, my oldest and dearest friend, for years to come. For it is through her moving on, that I can begin to walk through the park again with ease, with fullness again.

Amie