A person I once thought of as a friend has died. It happened suddenly, and I heard the news through someone who keeps up with him.

I hadn’t been in contact with this friend for a couple of years. We didn’t know each other for long, but we grew close in a weird, spotty way that to me exemplifies the oddities of modern-day intimacy. We lived far apart and each had little idea of what the other was like on an everyday basis, yet we learned some of each other’s deepest secrets and glimpsed some of each other’s darkest aspects. We also had some good laughs and saw some of each other’s nobler qualities.

Unfortunately, when discord arose between us, I wasn’t able to make things right. An observer might fault me for being insufficiently persistent, or being insufficiently patient, or exercising poor judgment in the first place, but it’s always easy to find fault in hindsight. The fact remains that I tried on several occasions to mend the rift, but when I saw that my efforts only seemed to make matters worse, I stopped trying to communicate with him. And now he’s dead.

Am I beating myself up? No. Would someone else, a better or at least more socially skilled person, have been able to make that situation right? Possibly; hard to say. But I did what I could at the time. Right now I’m just feeling sad. He was a character, and I’m sad for the world that he’s gone. And I’m remembering some good times we had in the brief time we knew each other. All in all I feel privileged to have known him.