In 2007 I heard from a long-lost friend. Bill saw my name in connection with the computational biology society I am involved with. He is working in a related field and had some question. I was really happy to hear from him and asked how he was doing. He sent me a lovely long letter about what he was up to, including (I think) that he had separated from his wife, and had two lovely kids. (He wrote to me at my Millennium email address, and so I lost his message when I left that job.)
I met both him and his wife doing theater together at MIT as an undergrad in the early 1980s. I admired them so much. She was a rare female physics major - I pretty much worshiped her for that. Physics at MIT is pretty hard-core. He was smart and funny and cute, and a great actor. They were a quirky and sweet couple; when they got married they both changed their last names to "Bug". They were a couple years ahead of me and I never felt quite hip enough to travel in their circles socially outside of the Shakespeare Ensemble.
I kept meaning to write back to Bill, and I wanted to carve out time to send him as detailed and open a message as he had sent me - and I never got around to it. But I carried around this sense of anticipation because I felt that when I did write to him, it might be possible to strike up a new friendship based on our shared experiences.
A couple days ago I was learning about Twitter, and saw a former colleague's reference to Bill on a Twitter post. I wrote back all excited: do you know Bill?? He wrote back to say that Bill passed away this year and sent a link to his memorial website. It doesn't say exactly how he died, but that it was from depression and bipolar disease (for which a
memorial fund has been set up).
As you can imagine, I feel deep regret about not writing him back. And I am reminded that it is good to put people first, to respond when friends reach out to you, and to be open to life and our fellow humans. (Maybe even when they are driving a car and honk at you in annoyance.)