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. Ba...