So I recently visited some of my old stomping grounds. It is natural in such circumstances to talk about “whatever happened to so and so” sorts of things. I had a conversation about someone I dated approximately a billion years ago, not seriously in any way, but someone I felt a general fondness for.
I expressed surprise at what he had ended up doing and said what I would have expected him to end up doing. I could tell the person I said it to thought I was being catty, so I told him that he was free to repeat it with my warm regards because I knew the individual I spoke of would expect me to think that and be amused by it. Don’t know whether he got the message yet, but, if he didn’t, he won’t.
He apparently died this week. Like as in dead. I suppose that, when I am 80, I will be used to people I know being dead. The online mentions of how he died are oblique, but it looks like it was perhaps a death by misadventure, which is maybe fitting if very very sad. I guess sometimes a person needs to remember to say what they want to say right away, to keep in touch, to . . . I don’t know.
I just feel sad, somehow more sad than I think I should for someone I haven’t seen in a long time.