Here Today Gone Tomorrow

There was an opinion piece in the St. Pete Times by Jim Aylward who wrote back in 2011 about how lives that have passed through his, just disappear. 

It’s a light piece but I’ve noticed the phenomenon as well, and the older I get the more unnerving it can be. Friends who would “check in” from time to time, just stop. Or someone who had for some reason put me on their list to receive “forwarded” emails suddenly just stop forwarding them.

The sudden end of hearing from someone seems by itself a kind of "last communication."  The silence, maybe that's the message. 

When it happens, whatever the connection that tethered two people together becomes just inert nothingness. Whatever kept them aware that the other still exists in this world is simply dissolved into utter quiet.

Whatever actual communication had occurred, as well as whatever may have  been resultantly constructed in the mind's eye of the sender, would also now be forever sandwiched between two question marks. One, symbolizing what was not known before there was a mental image of that person. The other, symbolizing the end of any further input that would change it.

I have no idea why I send stuff around. Maybe I just want to keep marking myself present in this world by pushing that last question mark out a little longer in time. 

One day, nevertheless, I’ll probably just stop, too, and then there will be only silence and you’ll have to guess whether it was because I just got bored, tired or died. Maybe it’ll be all three. And maybe that's the message.

But until then you’ll just have to put up with me.