We've all had those people who fly into our lives and wedge themselves into heart and mind, more than a good friend they become an intrinsic part of you more like family, at least for a little while.  One of the best friends I ever had also pushed, cajoled, and encouraged me in a way few other people ever have.  I owe Jason McKauge a sizable debt, and I'll never really get the chance to repay it.
We met while working at a Barnes & Nobles, I still in college and he having just escaped from the confines of education.  Though we met in Denver, we were both from the same small part of Texas, which never stopped amazing me.  We both read voraciously and dreamed of adding a few of our own works to the list of titles which we poured over.  Jason never let me rest, always pushing to see how much more I might be capable of, if I could work some paragraph into a diamond when the rough draft came out as less than coal.  He preferred the elegance of poetry, I worked in the sweeping arc of prose.  We went nightly over to the bar after work, playing chess and talking through our latest plots, characters, scribbles, or problems.
Then I left, off to New York and a new adventure which I hoped would help with writing and with life, and not long after Jason returned to Texas.  We would talk on the phone for hours, resuming the old prodding and encouraging, but I never saw my friend again.  Over the years we spoke less frequently, drifting apart.  I never stopped thinking of him, and when we did speak the time melted away and our friendship picked up just where it left off.
No one felt more proud when my first book came out than Jason, and no one felt more overjoyed when they received news that my publisher wanted to know what I'd do next.  Though he struggled his whole life with finishing the things he started, his mind always darting around to the next idea, he never stopped believing that I would achieve everything we ever dreamed. Jason died last year, far too young, with a book of poetry almost finished.  Friend will be bringing that volume out if they can, and I'll feel something between the joy he felt at my title and regret at everything I'll never get the chance to read which he might have written.
I miss my friend, as we always miss those we count as family.  I dedicated my last book to him, a small gesture in the face of grief, but I hope that somehow he knows that in the end he was thought of, and missed terribly.