Loss

I've lost an old and dear friend, an earnest soul from way back in my past with whom I recently reconnected. We were gonna catch up with each other. He called a couple of weeks ago at an inconvenient time for me and I did not answer the phone. I thought he'd leave a message and I'd get back to him. He didn't, I didn't, and now he's gone. Oh the regrets -the loss- of not taking the time to be inconvenienced a bit for an old friend.

He had a massive heart attack sometime last week and remained in a coma until he died yesterday morning. He was my old youth pastor, one of my earliest mentors. Part of the inconvenience of his phone call was my own discomfort at knowing how different I am now from the "kid" he remembered from back then. And yet, he saw things in me and encouraged me and challenged me in his own way and now, in hindsight, I feel that the reconnection would have been worth the discomfort. How many good things do I miss because I am unwilling to suffer through and move past my own discomfort?