Whence Men of Old

In which our Hero is startled by the pictures in past participant

A friend transplanted in time and space had cause to go to a trade show and blogged pictures. And there, featured, was a curiously familiar face, but I have optimistic memory for faces and I twig on things that aren’t really there so that can’t be someone I know. And then in the caption is a name, and suddenly the name leads my memory to a picture as the picture in my head finally lead my mind through a door to the name and then I’m on Google, and then it’s absolutely-definitely-positively certain that this guy, this random connection through a random connection is a classmate.

He’s older. (No shit, Sherlock, so are you, my mind points out without mercy) He’s not wire-thin anymore. And the early onset grey hairs back then were apparently the extent of it because his hair is still black. Black enough for a photo anyway. His work history is a resume I’d be mighty proud of. I think of the teasing our various groups would sling at each other and maybe it’s just right that he’s been eating. I hope he’s happy. I hope the subtle details of his life bring him joy.

I feel a brief impulse to mention that I’d noticed him. And then it passes and I shy away from the obligatory coffee to catch up.

The other picture is harder to see, coming as it does with the caption that abridges to “The victim’s family members leave the court room.” It’s in the middle of an article covering a trial for a violent crime which I won’t bother sharing. The people in the picture… well they’re not blood kin to the victims, but they’re friends in that web of connection, and the pictured and the victims are similarly connected to my family.

In the picture is a old woman, her hair all white now. Her hair was black when I met her, and by “met” I mean that I started to form memories of her as opposed to being one insensate member of a small gang of baby boys being proudly lugged on shoulders and hips. There’s a very old picture in a very old album of a baby me, with her son and her nephew pulling themselves to their feet to bracket me. And we spent many years as ready playmates, up to innocent mischief.

Her nephew is in the picture too, along with his wife, a girl I’ve met once at the wedding. Then radiant, now a bleak and harried harald at the head of the column of people. Him, he’s a handsome man, in many ways a taller version of his father. His hair line has been about as bashful as mine, and I concede the vanity that calls that to my eye. They’ve just had their fourth child, and I’m really hoping it’s the weight of sleeplessness I see on their shoulders.

But then I think about the man, and the boy, and I realize that the only thing that connects us now is death. Here I’m seeing him connected to this case, and before that, I saw him at a funeral a few years ago. And that’s probably how it goes for us from here, childhood friendship evolved to coincident good-byes.

I don’t have a point. It’s not about anything, it’s really just the long winded version of, “I saw some pictures of people I knew,” and that’s mostly the end of it. And of course the distance is something that I have as much a responsibility for as the other guys, and it’s perfectly in my ability to reach out, to try.

And I put down the pen and go to give my girlfriend a kiss on her ear.