"I've Changed' by Aditya Marskole

I read about your death from an old flame of yours in a Facebook message: “I think he’s gone. I’ve been crying all day.” That old flame was apparently still flickering.  I sent your step daughter and your brother,who I once met in Orlando, a message. Both responded and gave me tidbits:“Massive heart attack” and “Didn’t know what hit him.”

I wonder if genetics did it or maybe the cocaine you told me you did after college when you tried out acting in Los Angeles. You dated a couple of famous actresses, ran with a fast crowd, and tried to be more than you were, or maybe you lied about all that to sound cool.

I appreciate the loan you gave me once when I was destitute in Graduate school, a week away from homelessness and starvation. I’d lived on candy faculty members had in bowls on their desks and free packs of saltines I snatched from the café tables where I worked part time. I couldn’t bring myself to dumpster dive for Big Macs and fish sticks, like other students facing starvation. They’d waited until midnight when inside lights were off and employees had gone.

I was glad I paid you back that loan, and I appreciated your friendship during those college days. I guess we were friends. I don’t know what that means anymore. I never saw you, and we drifted apart. I was happy to reconnect with you on Facebook and was stunned to learn we lived a couple of hours from each other. We should’ve gotten together, but it wasn’t a priority for either of us.

I read your obituary online. There’s nothing there. You used to be an Episcopalian, but it doesn’t mention that. You married late, married a woman who would die before you, and you end up taking care of her handicapped child from an absentee father. If I had been in your shoes, I don’t believe I could’ve done that. I hope you’d found happiness. We all should try for that. I reached out to you when your wife died, but you didn’t reach back.

I read your Facebook page, scrambling to construct your life. You did internet sales? You liked those second rate movies, books, and sports teams?I wished I knew, but I won’t know you any better now that you’re gone than I knew you when you were alive all those years ago and already gone.

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I shared your obituary with others who knew you, and they were sad, said you had gone too soon, wondered what had become of you. Then, they drifted away, back into the internet, like waves at the beach. It’s all pleasantries and the right thing to say, but it could have easily been me or them, had the genetics or circumstances been different. We’re already gone, too. We just don’t know it yet.