Sincerely, Mike

MARCH 16 2012

March 16, 2012

Dear Billie,

Well well well.

It would seem as if my crippling fear of the passage of time and I have arrived at what I know to be but hate to admit is the inevitable, untimely farewell.

I understand that writing you a letter of all things at this point is not only stupid but straight up pointless; believe me, that much is clear.

But at this point it's become cathartic, you don't even have to write back. (That's pretty much impossible at this point anyway.) It just makes me feel close to you...and besides that fact, I'm just spent and depressed and have nothing better to do, anyway.

Now, on an even more morbid note-in a rare move by me and my seething hatred of change, I've taken a few steps in preparation of the inevitable and written a eulogy for you.

God, I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth. Or...pen, as it were.

Whatever.

You get the gist of it.

Anyways, I know you can't read it, at least physically, so I'm hoping that somebody in that awful place will see the umpteenth letter from me and take it upon themselves to actually open it and read it to you instead of tossing it straight into the garbage shoot so that I can be sure you...you know, hear it, since I don't really understand the logistics of attending your own funeral in ghost form or whatever.

I really tried hard not to let all the guilt seep through.

This is my final attempt to tell you the words you should've heard from me so long ago.

I hope you like it.

Sincerely,
Mike

~~~~~~

A Shitty Eulogy For Billie Joe Armstrong, My Best Friend And Musical Soulmate, That Will Never Do The Amazing Person He Was Or The Beautiful Life He Lead Proper Justice Because Words And I Aren't Friends And Never Have Been

By Mike Pritchard

Good morning/afternoon/evening. (change accordingly?)

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Mike Pritchard- or 'Dirnt', whatever floats your rootbeer.

And Billie Joe Armstrong was, in short, the most amazing person I ever had the absolute pleasure to spend twenty-odd years of my life rolling joints, flunking classes, making music, touring, changing diapers, laughing, crying, and everything in between with.

Sorry, Britt.

I won't go into detail about how we met or the countless memories we've made over the years- good, bad, and weird alike- because I know that if I do, I'll just about evaporate into a sobbing nothingness, and I'd like to remain composed for at least a little bit of this.

But sufficient to say, this man and his abundant talent, kindness, love, goofy charm, fiercely unique sense of self, and radiating inner beauty touched both myself and the entire rest of the world alike in a way that I'm very confident to say no one else walking this earth at this exact moment ever has.

But you see, the problem is, Billie never saw that.

For some horrifically unfortunate reason, he never looked in the mirror to see the eximious human being the rest of the world saw.

Instead, he was cheated by the words and deeds of a sick few and tricked into seeing something so far from the truth that it was honestly incomprehensible.