Memories left unsent

These past few weeks have been confronting for me. They’ve been filled with mixed emotions and a total disruption to what I thought I knew. In truth, I’m still finding my equilibrium.

I was at the gym when a text came in asking me how I was. It seemed innocuous, but something about it made me uneasy. I’m a recovering catastrophiser, so I stopped what I was doing to check my phone. Fearing the worst, whatever that might be.

This was the lone message of its kind, so I calmed down and continued rowing on the spot, getting nowhere but inching closer to the finish line - my allotted cardio time.

Three-quarters of an hour later, I arrived home and noticed a missed call from another friend. He was meant to be having a romantic coastal getaway with his partner but had sent me a follow-up text asking to ring when I got a chance. My heart sank again. The fact that these two would reach out to me on a Saturday morning was abnormal and anxiety inducing.

As I called him back, irrational thoughts like “what have I done?” and “I bet the police are looking for a criminal bearing an uncanny resemblance to me” raced through my mind. When he answered, I heard the crackle in his voice as he explained that he was devastated to be the one who had to tell me that one of my oldest and dearest friends had died that morning. He was only forty-one, like me. I went numb.

Three weeks on I am only just starting to process the loss. It’s going to take an awfully long time, though. Something tells me the human brain isn’t designed to make sense of such sudden and unforeseen death. Well, mine isn’t.

As I pored through pictures for his funeral, I found a huge collection from a trip he and I took road tripping around parts of the USA. It’s been almost fifteen years since we picked him up at the San Antonio airport to begin our adventure.

While smiling at all of the wonderful photos of the holiday, and recalling the memories attached to them, it dawned on me that I’d never again get to talk about those special few weeks with him.

We’d reminisced about it a lot in the immediate years that followed. Sharing pictures and exchanging random messages about the characters we met along the way. Something would always sporadically remind us of our drive from Dallas to Little Rock. It was memorable for him innocuously clearing his throat, and harmlessly spitting out the window… only for it to land on the windscreen of the car behind us. Confirmed as their wipers flicked not once but twice, despite the blue skies.

What resulted was him apologising profusely, but it fell on deaf ears. We gathered this as the incensed station wagon driver sped to draw alongside us, angrily gesturing that we pull over, before launching into a forty-minute high-speed chase, seemingly trying to run us off the road.

We didn’t revisit that trip enough in recent years. I wish we had. I thought we had more time. I knew we were making lifelong memories - I just didn’t think for him, they’d only last fifteen more years.

So send the silly meme. Share the photo from high school or that trip you took together. Drop the song you all used to belt out in the group chat. There’ll come a time you wish you could - and wish you had.

ZP / NpG

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