Avoiding any and all thing productive, I found myself scrolling through my contacts when I stumbled across a causal acquaintance who had died. He was a really nice guy who whenever I did hang around with him, I enjoyed myself. I couldn’t for the life of me think of a single reason why we never became closer friends.
Thinking back it was always the usual, lame excuses, “Busy” lives, working hard and crammed schedules that always led to quickly forgotten empty promises of lunch or dinner. “Hey, we should grab a drink!” None of which ever came to pass.
And now here was all of his information; phone number, twitter feed, email address, etc… What was I to do now? Delete it? I couldn’t think of a single sane reason not to but pressing the “delete” button seemed so disrespectful. Almost cruel. To pass away is one thing but to “be deleted” is something else. Harsh.
After some serious thought, I decided to call his number. And if you know me. I do not like talking on the phone. Even a little bit. To me this was a respectful gesture. I took a deep breath and listened to it ring and ring, eventually going to voicemail. I then left an unrehearsed, rambling, incoherent message about how sorry I was we never got to know each other better. I then apologized for never following up on at least one of our promised lunches. I’m aware of how silly this sounds but as I hung up I felt a surprising sense of closure. At least a little bit of closure. Not because I was proud of what I did in some self gratifying way, rather the feeling of not being cold hearted and deleting someone who deserved better.
Then my phone rang. I looked down and saw his name on the caller ID. Huh? I froze. Was I in a bad Kevin Bacon movie? The room started to spin a little and my heart began to pound in my ears. I took a deep breath, hit accept and slowly brought the phone up to my ear fully expecting to talk to a ghost.
It was his son. He was confused as to why I would call his late father. We laughed and I promised to explain it over lunch.
Date, TBD…
Agent Argyle 