He sent it a couple of weeks before he died, but I didn't open it then. I only opened it today, a week after finding out he was gone. I remember getting the notification that he'd sent me a message, and I'm pretty sure I know what happened after that. I imagine it went something like this: "I have a message, but I'm at work/driving/watching something on TV (Gord would be fine with that reason) so I'll check it when I'm done." That would have been followed by any number of events, which led to me forgetting my friend had sent me a message. He thought I'd like to see a wiener dog wearing battle gear (he was right) and I got too busy and distracted by whatever dumb thing was going on that I couldn't be bothered to open it.
There were comments and conversations on Facebook posts after that (because that's just the easiest way to be friends with our friends now) but I wasted what turned out to be my last chance to have what passes for a personal conversation with a friend these days. All I needed to do was type the words "Thank you!" or make a dumb little smile emoji, but I guess I couldn't be bothered that day. Or the day after that, etc., etc. Because why did I need to? It's not like Gord was going anywhere -- I'd have plenty of chances to talk to him again. (Spoiler alert: Nope.) Now, I have to make peace with the fact that my friend is gone, and that maybe I didn't do the friend-stuff well enough when I had the chance.
And I'm worried I'm not doing the friend-stuff right now, either. There are things I could be doing to remember him properly, and I can't get my ass in gear to get them done.
Gord had the kindest voice I've ever heard. This week, a friend sent me some audio files from when Gord was a reporter. I haven't been able to listen to them. It will be the first time I hear his voice, after the last time I really heard his voice. Whatever series of wires and circuits I have that passes for a brain isn't ready for that right now. So once again, I set my friend aside.
There are little bits and pieces of Gord, here and there in my house. There are things I know I have, things he gave me, that I can't find. And honestly, I haven't looked too hard for them yet. I'm not ready to sit and cry over a folder filled with the X-Files mish-mash he'd known I would fawn over, or the email he'd printed out back when I was first hired in Ottawa, announcing my impending arrival in the CFRA newsroom. Those things are all in a box, and I will take them out eventually, but for now.....they're just another wiener dog in battle gear that I'm not ready to look at.
I feel sad, but I don't want it to come out of me yet. Little bits sneak out at inconvenient times. When I'm at work. When I'm driving. When I'm trying to pick through boxes of strawberries at the grocery store, to find one that doesn't have a fuzzy berry in it. (It's a fact that they put one fuzzy strawberry in every box. Prove me wrong.) I want to miss my friend the right way......I just don't want to do it yet. So it stays in the inbox, and the notifications keep piling up. If there's a storage limit on the brain-version of Gmail, I'll be getting a notice from Google any day now to check my messages, and I guess then I'll finally get to it. That's probably going to be a bad day.
I hope he knew he mattered to me, even when I wasn't good at showing it by, for example, taking 30 seconds to open a fucking Facebook message that would end up being the last fucking Facebook message he ever sent me. I hope he knows that I kept everything he ever gave me, laughed at every funny picture he ever sent me...even if I waited until after he was gone to look at that last one. I hope he knew that for the rest of my life, I will laugh about the time we merry bunch of bastards in the newsroom crammed a Ralph Wiggum doll into a photocopier, and the time he described a never-to-be-revealed-by-me hero as "an asshole."
I hope I was as good a friend to Gord as he was to me, and I think that never knowing the answer to that question will always make me sad.
