The Hardest Letter

I've been trying to write a letter for a year and a half now. The instigator is a simple Christmas card from 2005. The intended recipient is the mother of my dead friend. Perhaps you can see why this is hard for me.
I only got to see Patrick once a week, at church, and every so often during an extra church function. He was one of the reasons I kept going to church every week during my high school faith-crisis stage. The youth group was phenomenal there, and not because of any adult leadership, but because we took charge of our group and did what worked for us. We didn't just hang out and have fun, either; we actually grew together, developed together, did the whole faith thing and helped each other out. We were active in the church, in every aspect. We went after each other for not showing up. It was important to us then.
We grew older, graduated from high school within two or three years of each other, went off to college. Patrick went to Oklahoma State, two years after I went to the mountains to study. Near the end of his freshman year, he went out running like he usually did one Sunday morning. He loved to run; he was in track throughout high school. He ran by the train tracks. Somehow he got caught on the tracks while a train was coming, tripped or something.
It's hard enough trying to tell your friends and family that a good friend died. It's worse when no one you have near you to talk to knows this guy since they didn't run in the same circle. It's even odder when you have to answer the question, "What happened?" with: "He got run over by a train." I felt so alone in the hours after my mom told me. I turned away from her; I didn't want Mommy comforting me like I was 12. I was 20, dammit, I needed a shoulder my own age. I went in search of my boyfriend at the time, but couldn't find him. He didn't answer his phone. After a while I realized he'd gone to class and wouldn't be out for another two hours, so I went back home and locked myself in my room, signing on to instant messenger to talk to my best friend back home. She didn't know Patrick either, and kept suggesting that he'd committed suicide. I knew Patrick; I knew he hadn't done that, wasn't capable of it, but still she insisted that it was a possibility. I turned off the computer and sat alone. My best friend didn't understand, my boyfriend was unavailable, my mom was not an option. My Patrick was gone, and there was no one to comfort me.
I nearly failed a class in order to go to the funeral. It was during the big military parade of the year, and I was in the band. I spoke to the other two guys in my section, and they both said the same thing: "Don't worry about us. Take care of your business." I went.
Patrick's mother was the strongest, most stable person in the dangerously overflowing sanctuary. She carried her only child's urn with the utmost dignity and simply radiated comfort to everyone there. I couldn't understand how she could do that... she was divorced and didn't have a real rosy relationship with her ex, from what I gathered from overhearing things, he was apparently in real bad shape over Patrick, her whole family was gone. Her husband, her son, her only child. I would have been in pieces. She wasn't. Far from it, in fact.
I think that the same thing that kept her together was the same thing that I ran away from after that: faith. I had been imagining my life spiraling down the tubes for a while before that April, then felt abandoned when Patrick died, then continued to feel sorry for myself for many months after that. I no longer attend church, for many various reasons, probably the biggest of which is simple laziness. I liked sleeping in on Sunday mornings during college, when I didn't have my parents getting me up to go to church every week.
She was the strength in that church that day, the anchor for everyone there. I admire her so much for that. But instead of telling her so, I've been putting it off... I don't know what to say or how to say it to convey what I feel. I feel guilty for not answering her earlier, or at least sending a Christmas card back. There's so much I want to say--how much I loved Patrick, how he helped me through some really tough times in high school, how I admired her and how she raised him what with their home situation--and so many things I want to ask her.
The wastebasket is overflowing with detached, broken ideas scribbled on notebook paper. I suppose it's time to add some more to the pile.