As you get older you recognise the fact that you will probably live to see your grandparents and your parents pass away. You will have to experience the loss of old family friends you have known all your life and you will experience having to say goodbye to someone lying in a hospital bed who knows as well as you do that they won’t be waking up in the morning. If you are really lucky that will be the only death you will experience until your own. That is the way it is supposed to be isn’t it? You get born, you grow up, you grow old, you die – you need to make space for the next generations.
But sometimes life throws a spanner into those carefully oiled works. Sometimes, on a bright Tuesday morning in between breakfast and your second cuppa as you’re scanning through your Facebook news-feed something else happens. Sometimes, death sneaks up and reminds you just how flimsy it all is.
That one little status. Cryptic to the extreme but oozing with enough hurt, sorrow and angst that it stands out against the backdrop of grumpy cats and personality quizzes. An old friend tagged. You know the one. The almost bff from school. The one you think of randomly and smile about, but you never quite get around to saying more than happy birthday to when Facebook reminds you to.
A quick Facebook stalk to see what’s occurring and there you have it. That persons news-feed, full of family photos, silly personality quiz’s, grumpy cats and loving quotes from friends – all topped off with an ever growing list of RIP posts.
That person’s life. In a snapshot. And for you, sitting at the breakfast table scrolling through it, an incredible sense of waste. Wasted time, wasted opportunities, wasted chances. Their family and friends are strangers to you, hell, they are a stranger to you, this person they grew up to become - but that piece of them that is forever in a scruffy school uniform with a wonky tie, those memories of them at that sleep over with the horror movie, that feeling that time you got in that big fight and moved desks – all that is just yours now. That version of them is in your hands. Those little bubbles of time have only one hard copy left and it is in your head. There are no photos of it to upload, no Timehop reminders, no Facebook posts to look back on.
And all you can do is add your little RIP to the list, as your life drags you back to the present. Through all the intervening years, the kids, the house moves, the partners, the ups and the downs, all that time that separates you, all those endless forks in the road that took you in such different directions. And you morn for the person you used to know, stood there in their scruffy school uniform with a wonky tie, smiling and waving.