Touched By Time

     There was a visitor to Roseholme Cottage yesterday, someone I had not seen since before the COVID-19 pandemic, the man I refer to here as the Data Viking.  We went to High School together.

     For years, he has lived in the far north of Indiana, driving down to Indianapolis to visit and go to the big gun shows.  Most of that went by the wayside while everything was screwed up.  We kept in touch via e-mail and I was looking forward to resuming our old routine.

     It's not going to happen.  A month and a half ago, his e-mails stopped arriving.  I've been increasingly busy at work and assumed he was, too.  Instead, he had an adverse health event that necessitated an abrupt retirement and relocation halfway across the country to live near his adult son.  He's in generally good health but his vision was affected.

     Three weeks ago, I got a short, "Call me at..." e-mail from him with an unfamiliar area code and thought, "Uh-oh, my old friend's e-mail has been hacked."  I called anyway, using my employer's firewalled, computer-based phone system: they've got super-duper antivirus, after all.  But it was indeed my old friend, who explained his changed circumstances.

     A death in his ex-wife's family brought him back through Indy with his son over this weekend, and they had a few hours to spare, so he arranged to be dropped off and we spent several hours getting caught up.

     It may be the last time I see my friend.  We'll stay in touch by telephone, though neither of us is much for long phone calls.

     For my generation, there is considerably more sand in the bottom of hourglass than in the top.  There is a lot I still want to do, and no better time than the present to start doing it.