Thanks for your recent email on "making each day count." I couldn't agree more. In fact, I've dedicated each day of my adult life to just that principle. It explains why I haven't become a work-aholic, for example. I don't save money just for a "retirement" that I might never see, but also to buy blocks of time here and there when I can "make each day count."

Some days off I may do nothing but "decompress", i.e. get the work-world out of my system. But I think this discipline of having more leisure time than most people has made me a more thoughtful, caring, people-oriented person than I would have been otherwise. You know what those yuppies are like, Steve. I'd rather die than be one of them.

Please keep me in your thoughts. I think of you a lot and still hope we can be closer in the future. By now I'm sure you know that Jen and I had a blowout in November. The good news is that we email each other a lot and chat almost everyday using AOL's Instant Messenger. Do you use that? My handle is DEAN10003. Jen and I will always love each other, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we're comfortable being in one another's presence again.

Just for the record: My attitude about death is identical to my attitude about pre-birth. When somebody announces she's pregnant I don't weep and wail at all the things I wish I could tell the baby in nine months. When somebody dies I don't weep and wail at all the things I wish I could have told them nine months before. I liked Joe, for example, and said everything I had to say to him well before he departed.

When one morning in 1985 I went to visit my lover Paul and found him dead, I didn't burst into tears — although I did shed some a few days later. But I did feel this incredible warmth suffusing my body as if his spirit was coming into me — as if I would now be living for both of us.

And that's the point, for me at least. If someone has lived an admirable life, then everything they've taught us most continue to live in our own lives. That's what it means to "live up to" the principles that mean most to us and which we see exemplified in the lives of others.

Death is currently society's greatest taboo — much more than sex is. It's never discussed, never planned for. Paul was 76 when he died, and he and I had discussed it fully. When the event finally happened, it was as natural and as "wonderful" in its own way as childbirth. Western societies have it all wrong about the birth-death lifecycle. The "primitive" people have a much healthier attitude about all this. And as a result, their old people don't need to feel embarrassed about being old, or guilty about having to leave their loved ones behind.

I look forward to the time you're making enough money to be able to take more time off. Then maybe we'll have a chance to be friends for real.