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I first met Patrick when I was a senior in high school and he was in the U.S. as an exchange student from France. He was here to spend his senior year of high school living the typical American life with a typical American family.

The first time I saw him, he was boarding a yellow school bus, wearing a red jacket and eating a banana. He had the most amazingly unforgettable black curly hair. I remember thinking that no American guy would ever get on the school bus eating a banana.

I quickly assumed that he was way too good looking to every want to date me, so I decided to try to be his friend instead. I didn't try to impress him and I joked with him like we had been friends for years.

We quickly became close and remained so for the rest of his year in residence.

When he left for home at the end of the school year, we kept in touch through phone calls and letters. In one of our phone calls, he asked me how I felt about leaving the states and coming to live with him in France. I often think how different my life would have been if I had gone.

I eventually got married and had a child and lost touch with Patrick, but I never forgot him. In 1999, I decided to use the internet to try to find him. I found several email addresses with his name attached to them...addresses from all over the world...but one caught my eye. It was "theinternetmonk@yahoo.fr". I remember thinking...that's got to be him! It was exactly his sense of humor and if I had gotten all caught up in the internet age, he probably had too.

I sent him an email and we corresponded on a regular basis...even talking through instant messenger. He moved to Canada in 2000 and married a friend of his there to get a Visa. He became the web master for the Raelian organization and I began to lose touch with him again.
Apparently, the cult had quite a pull on him.

I've been dreaming of Patrick this week. I dreamed that he was alive and that my learning about his death was a mistake. I talked to him in my dream and he told me that he was fine and that he missed me. I told him how I tried to email him one weekend at the end of October and that his best friend emailed me back telling me that he had jumped off a bridge in Switzerland after a long stay in a mental institution. I told him how I cried and cried.

We used to joke about our precarious mental states, he and I. In my dream, we did again.

I miss you, my internet monk.

Learn more about this author, Jennifer Brister.
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