A few years ago a friend of mine died.

Been thinking a lot about getting older and death lately as I’ve reached the “certain age” portion of my life and some people in said life are departing this plane of existence. I hope they’re going north instead of south.

This pal of mine to whom I refer, his name was Nathan, was a cigar buddy of mine; he was younger than me by about ten years, and a few days before he passed he left me a voice message with one of the embarrassing moments where a dude tells another dude he loves him. Now, Nate and I belonged to the same church; this sort of brotherly love wasn’t gay or anything degenerate so fuck you and your mother if your head is leading you in that direction. I didn’t think anything of the remark except to laugh because in awkward moments where guys say things to each other they’re too macho to say, you laugh about it.

Two days later Nate died suddenly and unfairly. As a teen he’d been the victim of a brain tumor; while surgeons succeeded in removing the tumor, it left him with half a brain, half blind, and not fully functional overall. But he did his best.

As last conversations go, I wonder if somehow Nate was communicating something to me under, say, spiritual pressure to let people know how he felt about them before he left us. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one he said those words too.

Maybe I’ll find out someday. But as I sit here feeling not too good about life in general myself, I hope it means there really is something greater than us out there who knows when our time is ending and guides us through our last, and probably most important, actions before the end.