I wish you all the best, invisible internet friend. You and your beautiful family deserve only that.

I think about the way he always smelled and how much I miss him

I have his book "Picnic, Lightning", and it's the only book of poetry I own or have thought about owning. Most of his poems are here though, you can pick out a favorite and tell people you have one! I might recommend... all of them? http://www.poemhunter.com/billy-collins/poems/page-1/

Anything by Billy Collins, such as his "Introduction to Poetry" because it seems more like he is mocking poetry than writing it, and I can get on board with that: I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.