How do we not constantly scream with joy?

I recently purchased a few new bags of coffee beans. I ordered them online last week and had them shipped to me for free. They’re great beans. Ethiopian beans that have been processed in a specific way, and I wish my friend Dennis were here to enjoy them with me. If he were here we’d sit and talk about life and the complexity of relationships while sipping in enjoyment and satisfaction. And we’d comment on the juiciness of the coffee, how it’s almost like drinking nice red wine. We’d also just sit together without talking, because we don’t need to. How many people have friends like that?

I realize that I’m speaking of him as if he has died. He’s not dead. He’s very much alive in Europe right now. In fact, he FaceTimed me this morning from the streets of Prague and I was able to see the massively beautiful Gothic city gate and a 700 year old church off in the distance. The sunlight was warm and perfect. 

I’m thankful for my friends. Distance is strange in the modern world. Why don’t we constantly scream with joy about how amazing technology is that we can talk in real time on a phone with a friend anywhere in the modernized world? That we can talk via video and see what each other is seeing. That we can see each other! How do we not scream in wonder and amazement every single time?

It’s my friend James’ birthday and I called him and left a message saying happy birthday. We haven’t talked for over a year now, I think. But what is time or distance in a friendship? It’s so nice to be able to leave a message on his phone knowing he’ll eventually listen to it, though. I imagine his face as he listens. It gives me a spark of joy. I miss James. (There I go again). James, too, is not dead. He is alive and in Chicago and I plan on seeing him there with my family somehow before this calendar year ends. 

I can’t do any of these things with my brother, though. Because he, unlike my friends, actually is dead. I do sometimes reach for the phone to text him about something. And because of that, I dread the day that Raphael Nadal officially retires from tennis because it will be another reminder of how time continues on, and that events occur without the people who would appreciate them still being here. And it will once again remind me that we are all going to die. And that some people die before others and that the disorder of that will stir your heart for your entire life.

My brother will always be twenty-three years old. As Wendell Berry once said, “The dead are changeless, they grow no older.” He said that it is we who change. We are the ones who grow strange to what we were.

But I still want to ask my brother, “How you been?” I do imagine doing that sometimes. And I imagine him in his voice telling me, “Well, I’ve been petting some really soft cats.”