A few days ago I was working at my desk, it was a routine afternoon.  I had things to finish, some calls to make, but it was manageable.  Then an incoming email caught my eye.  Within seconds, I was in shock.  A friend had suddenly passed away,  someone I respected professionally, and I also enjoyed his personality and wit.

He belonged to one of my Linkedin groups, which is how we met, and a mutual friend sent the email.  I pushed my chair back from my desk and sat quietly for a while, lost in thought.

When you get hit with news like this, all the little irritations and to-dos in a normal day suddenly seem very unimportant in comparison to death.  My thoughts went to the man’s wife and sons. My heart was heavy.

I recalled an exchange he and I had about blogging. My friend was an excellent writer and I nagged him to share his thoughts with the planet. He resisted, then finally his son designed a sharp-looking blog and the postings started.  And they were wonderfully insightful postings, describing his family’s recent move to a new country, and the challenge of starting a new business.

Once my friend became addicted to blogging, he bugged me about keeping my blog updated. We made deal that each time one of us did an update, the other person would get a reminder to do an update too. It was a good motivational idea and created a friendly competition.  Most importantly, it encouraged each of us to keep our blogs updated.

As the news of my friend’s death sunk in, I went to his blog and read the last posting.  The posting reflected his usual optimism.  He’d thought about starting a new blog, but then decided not to. One of the last sentences had a reference to our update agreement. aldkladajdajdajd

I smiled at that.  I think the best way to remember my friend is by doing this update to my blog.