It sounds like Mark was a great friend indeed, and you were the same to him as well. Sorry for your loss, just commenting to say that I appreciate you talking about it- all we can do is move forward. Not move on or move past, but forward with the memories and friendships present and past alongside us.
Thank you. The times we spent together during his chemo the last few months, I generally kept the topic on everything but his cancer. He got enough people talking to him about that. It's one of the things he said he really appreciated when I came over... we talked about anything but cancer and his chemo. You do what you can for friends in life. But after that, what can you do for them? I posted this to draw people into that thought, and to spend some time with it. In America we don't spend much time thinking deeply about death. And we should. We spend years thinking about college, and that's only a few years of our life. But death? Maybe a couple of poignant laughs over beers followed by a long awkward silence...