While People Are Still Alive
When people die, we suddenly become very good at remembering them.
We say beautiful things. We bring flowers. We write long messages about how important they were. We stand beside graves in silence, looking serious and thoughtful, as if we have finally understood something profound about life.
And yet I often wonder what any of that actually means.
Not in a cynical way. Mourning is human. Loss hurts. But still, somewhere in the back of my mind there is always the same stubborn thought: if someone truly mattered to me, perhaps the important part was not standing beside their grave afterward, but sitting beside them while they were still alive.
That idea has followed me for years.
The Friend I Forgot To Call
I once had a friend who suffered a terrible motorcycle accident. Recovery took him eight months. Broken body, endless rehabilitation, pain, uncertainty, all the things that suddenly reduce a person’s world to hospital walls and slow movement.
Back then I visited him often.
I took time for him. We talked. I helped where I could. It felt natural and obvious because the situation was serious. A badly injured person clearly needs support. Humans are surprisingly good at reacting to visible disasters.
Eventually he recovered reasonably well physically. At least enough that life no longer looked dramatic from the outside.
And that was the moment when I slowly disappeared.
Not intentionally. That is the uncomfortable part. There was no decision. No conflict. No betrayal. Just ordinary life doing what ordinary life does best — consuming time with endless small nonsense until important things quietly slip away in the background.
I always had excellent excuses. I was busy. I was tired. I would visit next week. There would be a better opportunity. At minimum I should at least call him. Which, naturally, I also did not do.
The strange thing about neglected friendships is that they usually do not collapse loudly. There is no explosion. They simply dry out slowly like forgotten plants.
“I Don’t Think I Can Do This Anymore”
The accident left him with physical problems, but also psychological ones. Once during a phone conversation he mentioned it quite openly.
He told me he could not carry the weight of life anymore. At one point he even said he might kill himself.
We spoke for a while. I listened. I tried to say something sensible. When the call ended I felt slightly uneasy, but not enough to immediately drive to his house or even call him again the next day.
Then life continued. And I continued with it. That sentence stayed somewhere in my memory, but in the same lazy, distant category where people place dentist appointments, unfinished emails and “things I should probably deal with later.”
Later never came. Some time afterward I learned he had committed suicide.
The Silence Afterwards
People often expect dramatic guilt in stories like this. But honestly, what I mostly felt was something stranger and colder.
Recognition. A realization that he had actually told me what was happening, and I still somehow failed to truly hear it.
The human mind is remarkably skilled at believing there will always be more time. More conversations. More opportunities. Another weekend. Another phone call. Another chance to fix things properly.
Sometimes there is not.
That event stayed with me for years. Not as trauma exactly, but as a permanent reminder of how easily people disappear while we are busy postponing them.
Since then I have carried a simple rule: If you want to care for someone, do it while they are alive.
After death, nothing helps anymore. Flowers help the living? Funerals help the living? Memories help the living?
The dead are already beyond all of it.
Do We Only Need People While They Serve Some Purpose?
This leads to another uncomfortable question.
Do we mostly maintain relationships only while we actively need something from them?
Maybe companionship. Maybe validation. Maybe distraction. Maybe someone who listens to us complain about life while pretending we ourselves are highly evolved philosophical beings.
I do not think people are entirely selfish. But friendships often seem temporary in ways we rarely admit openly.
Connections form naturally. Shared interests, work, school, hobbies, random circumstances. For a while people become important parts of each other’s lives. Then slowly careers change, priorities shift, relationships appear, children are born, people move away, or everyone simply becomes exhausted.
And little by little the connection weakens. No tragedy. No hatred. Just erosion.
Years later you suddenly remember someone and wonder: What happened to that person? Are they still alive? Did they disappear? Or did I simply stop paying attention?
Loneliness Is Strange
Sometimes I feel lonely too.
That probably surprises people because I used to be extremely social. Looking back now, I am not even sure whether I truly needed deep human connection or whether I simply enjoyed feeling socially important. There is a difference.
Being surrounded by people is not the same thing as being understood.
Over time I noticed that only a very small number of people actually matter to me in conversation. Those rare individuals with whom one coffee becomes two coffees, then dinner, then somehow several hours disappear without effort.
With them conversation feels easy. Nobody competes. Nobody waits impatiently to speak. Nobody performs intelligence like a peacock displaying feathers.
You simply talk. And more importantly — you listen.
I think those people become important because they make you feel visible without forcing you to prove yourself constantly.
Would Anyone Notice?
Sometimes I think about contacting old friends. Sometimes I actually do. Sometimes there is no answer.
And then an ugly little thought quietly appears: Would people notice me only if I disappeared?
It is not even self-pity exactly. More like curiosity about human nature. People become strangely attentive only after absence. As if disappearance itself creates value.
Perhaps that is simply how life works.
Everyone is busy surviving their own problems, maintaining their own fragile mental balance, carrying their own invisible burdens. Maybe most people are not intentionally neglectful. Maybe they are simply overwhelmed.
Including me. Especially me.
Accepting Life As It Is
At some point perhaps it is healthier to stop demanding permanence from human relationships.
People enter your life. People leave. Some remain longer. Some vanish almost immediately. Some unexpectedly return years later as if no time passed at all.
That is simply the movement of life.
Still, despite everything, I try to remember one thing: If someone matters to me, I should probably tell them while there is still time.
Not at the funeral. Not in a nostalgic social media post years later. Not while staring thoughtfully into the distance pretending to have discovered deep wisdom about mortality.
Now.
While they are still alive.
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