I recently looked up an old film school classmate. I can’t remember what exactly prompted me to enter his name into Google, but for some reason, I did and was saddened to see that he died several years ago. That’s one of the things you have to get used to when you get older: when you Google long-lost friends, the news that pops up is often bad.
For most of my life, running internet searches on old friends has been sort of fun. You suddenly ask yourself, Hey, I wonder what happened to so-and-so, and after a little bit of searching, you can spy on them from afar — see who has gotten rich, fat, and married again (and again) or who has dropped off the face of the earth or lives just around the corner. (That actually happened to me a few years ago.) I said Google searches have been this way “for most of my life,” but that isn’t really true. For most of my life, there wasn’t a Google at all. When you lost track of someone, they stayed lost. But Google and I have grown up together, in a way, and now there’s a nontrivial chance that some of the people I’m searching for are no longer with us. And the only way I would know that is if I have a random burst of curiosity about someone and pull out my phone.
“Is everything all right?” a colleague asked. I was staring down at the Google search returns with an unsettled expression.
“I guess,” I said. “I just found out that a friend of mine died.”
This was technically true, but it was the kind of thing that needed instant clarification. Before my colleague could express sympathy or put a gentle hand on my shoulder, I needed to set the record straight. Yes, he was my friend several decades ago; no, I hadn’t thought of him or been in contact with him since the early 1990s; yes, it’s sad, of course, when anyone dies; but no, honestly, I’m not upset or in shock or anything, really. It was important to get all of that out quickly. I didn’t want to be accused of whatever the mourning-for-a-friend equivalent is of “stolen valor.”
But for the rest of the day, I felt increasingly down in the dumps and dispirited. Not because — to be blunt — I felt regret about losing a friend or sad about his death. I felt bad for myself because I’m at the age when friends and old acquaintances are going to start dropping away, and when they do, the reaction will not be, Oh no, what a tragic shock but instead something like, Huh, well, he didn’t look too good in that Instagram post I ‘liked’ eight years ago.
CONSCIENTIOUS NEWSPAPER OBJECTOR
I’m at the stage of life when not only do these things happen, but they’re supposed to happen. But it will seem like they’re happening more and more, with greater velocity, because we’re all just a quick search away from each other. In years past, people would drift apart and, sure, you’d just assume that they would eventually shuffle along — all flesh is grass, as they say, even that child from Sweden who spent a year in my seventh-grade class. Unfortunately, we remain connected to everybody we’ve ever known. As long as we remember how to spell their names, we’re a click away from their hometown newspaper obituary or Facebook memorial page.
I suppose this is a natural progression. After all, I am required to wish those same de facto strangers a happy birthday every time I open a social media app, so it’s to be expected that we’ll mark one another’s passings, too, probably in the same vaguely detached and routine way. The internet has made staying in touch a lot easier, but it has also made something equally valuable and important, losing touch, nearly impossible. And I’m old enough now to understand the value of both.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
