The Great Relocation of 2024 (from NC to NY) has not gone as planned. Some good but some bad, too. It was never clear what would happen, or how things would go, so…meh.

Old friends in NY were supposed to be part of the future after the move. Yes, it might be more than a little misguided to think friends from 40-some years ago might still care to be friends, again, but I did not expect so many of them to be dead. Gone. No way to contact them.

One of the saddest was a really wonderful guy who’s phone number was hard to find. Last night, as I searched the internet for information, his obituary came up first. The sad part is he died 8 days ago after spending three months in the local hospital. I drove 760 miles to New York lived here for 33 days as of this writing, yet missed a connection to an old friend by less than a mile. (The distance from my Rome apartment to the hospital in which my old friend passed away. Eight days ago.)

Oddly, this all feels kind of humorous. Funny. Like the old joke about how to make God laugh.

Maybe late tonight, when I’m not sleeping, the weight of the loss will be heavier. Or I’ll feel it more when another medical professional asks me: “You live alone? Have any friends you can count on?” At a certain age, you lie to the medical people to keep from getting phone calls with strangers who say they care about you. Unless you really need that call.

For me, its off to other opportunities, other possibilities, other dramas, other illnesses, other losses. But with a renewed faith in the whimsical nature of a universe intent on being random, which means even at my age, something good is bound to happen.