An old high school friend is dying

[True Dough]

5. That's sad

I hope your friend can maintain that happiness until the end.

I had a good high school friend, Dave, who I lost touch with. I tried Googling him but never found any trace of him online, which is odd in this day and age. Then his sister (who's surname had changed when she married, so I'd never found her online either) sent me a personal message on Facebook one workday afternoon. She said she had something "extraordinary" to tell me about Dave but she wanted to do it by phone rather than on Facebook.

So when I was home that evening, I awaited her call. My mind raced with the possibilities of what had happened to my old friend. Had he become a successful businessman? Made a major scientific discovery? Won the lottery? No, I told myself, it couldn't be anything like that because he would have turned up on Google in any such instance.

When his sister and I spoke, she revealed that Dave had gone to military college and joined the air force. He went home one Christmas to spend the holidays with his folks. On Christmas eve morning, he didn't emerge from his room. His mom went to check on him and found him still in bed, unresponsive. He was dead. An autopsy later revealed that he had a rare and previously undetected heart condition. It took him at age 32.

I was devastated. Even though Dave and I hadn't spoken in well over 10 years, the news of his death weighed me down for about three weeks. I still think about it from time to time, like now, and how unfair it is. But then I remember there are kids and infants dying in hospitals and how that's an even greater tragedy.

Life is hard sometimes, but it beats no life at all.