Just a few days ago a voice on the TV informed me that an old friend is gone.
I have never been much for New Year's resolutions, and the older I get, the less likely I am to construct such flimsy artifacts. I will be 71 in the spring, and the chances of me finally quitting smoking may be better than my winning a multi-million dollar lottery, but not by much. It is doubtful I will discontinue drinking, give up the demon weed, or reduce my sugar intake.
Yet I find myself making a vow of sorts, a quiet, humble promise to try to take a lesson imperfectly learned and act on it.
Earlier this year I learned that Richard died. He was an accomplished leather-worker and mask-maker that I met back when I worked with my wife at her booth at the Sterling Renaissance Faire. I wasn't close to Richard, but we had some good pause-and-gabs, and sometimes he'd come down to our Slow Crafter, Partly In The Road, Faire Weekend Potlucks. He was a politics junkie, cutting and stitching to CNN, and every so often something would happen that made me think: I should scare up Richard's number and find out what he thinks about the poltroon Republiclods' latest dumbfuckery. But I'm a maniacally busy person, and so was he, working on stock and doing shows all over the country--they worshiped his most fantastical masks at Mardi Gras.
So I never got around to calling. Too late, I learn that he had been fighting cancer, and lost. Well shit. The chance to share a laugh or a Miss Manners Anarchist's take on What Should Be Done gone forever.
I did draw a lesson from that: stop being such a procrastinator when it comes to catching up with people whose lives went one way while mine went another.
So early this summer I sent a letter to what I thought was the home of the mother of another old friend from even more years gone by. Her name was Pam, and she called a few weeks later. We talked about trying to get together; she had met my wife of thirty-some years just once, by chance, at least twenty years ago,and I had never met the woman she'd been sharing her life with for over a couple decades.
You can guess how it went. We were busy, I had a dozen jobs going on, and we were hip-deep in baby season of our wildlife rehab practice. She was commuting from up here to New York City, where her partner, an opera singer and teacher, worked. But we'd get together some time.
In late November, when things calmed down bit, I got thinking I should try catching up with her again to see if we could finally meet up. Maybe after the holidays.
About a ten days ago we were having morning coffee, trying to assemble ourselves for the day ahead. The local news was on, but I was reading and not paying much attention.
Then my wife said, you know her, right?
Know who? Why?
Pam was killed, hit by a car while getting out of her own car near her home. Pronounced dead at the scene.
So this my vow: I will try to quit thinking I can catch up with someone I'm thinking about later.
Later may well be too late.