A Lost Opprotunity

A Story by

A true story. It didn't happen to me, but someone I know.

This is the worst way to get bad news.

Getting excited, seeing that familiar face posted online. Thinking you're gonna get to talk to your old best friend. See him laugh at how you've had two kids, yet still can't remember how to email pictures from your phone. How you'll introduce your lovers to each others, your kids. All the jobs you've had. The old friends you've met. To relate once again, to retouch with the person you trusted all of your early life troubles with.

But they never respond to your message. Months, nothing. You forget about it until something happens to spark them back into your head. So you go back to check.

That familiar face isn't posted there anymore. And now you have to read all of these shallow messages, written in 30 seconds, with the generic "RIP", or how much they miss your friend.

You sit there, you have no idea what's happened. He's dead. But how? Who? Why? What did that idiot do?

So you message his lover. The one you should have been introduced to, with a teasing joke, and a lot of laughing. You have to ask her all those questions, make her think about it. Spread the misery.

No wonder she never responds.

So you sit in the dark while your family sleeps. Liquor in hand, tears in eyes, and a bitter laugh in throat. Think about his kid's standing over his grave. How you'll never see him.

You wanted to show him something. A band, that's right, a band that he'd love.

But you won't get to do that. You won't get to do any of that. Cause your eyes are sore, your neck hurts, and you feel dead. So you'll go to sleep, and your friend won't. You follow your nightly routine, wondering what he did before he went to sleep. What he won't do ever again.

It's such a shame. It's a lost opportunity.