Man On The Side: December 2024

Contemplating life at Mariepskop peak in the Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa

Nothing changes your perspective about life quite as much as the death of someone you know.

A friend of mine passed away just 10 days before Christmas. His name was Paolo, and he was a high school classmate. He’s not the first from my batch to have died—from time to time, I get random updates about other classmates from those I still keep in touch with—but Paolo’s passing has had a profound impact on me that I did not expect.

It’s a bit strange because he and I weren’t close. I mean, maybe not in our adult years, but I’d like to think that we were, back in high school, if not socially, at least, physically; my surname followed his alphabetically, and so we always sat next to each other in class or stood beside each other during roll call. We were also sort-of neighbors as we lived in the same small district in the same city, and so I’ve been to his place a couple of times.

My high school batchmate Weng delivered a eulogy at Paolo's wake

Paolo was a bit of a jokester and was very open and gregarious; he was friends with everybody and was looked at as a leader. He was artistic and liked to draw stuff, but he was also extremely literate and smart, which aren’t things you can readily associate with very many rowdy teenage boys in a Catholic high school. I have this vivid memory of one word play exercise the class had one morning in junior year: the teacher asked what synonym of the word “nourished” could you get if you took out some letters from the same word. Paolo blurted out, almost instantly, “nursed.” I looked at him in awe. I never forgot that.

In sophomore year I started calling myself Jed, after a character from a book I read about a trio of siblings who solved mysteries. The character’s actual name was John, but he elected to call himself Jed. He was the eldest of the siblings and the smartest. Since I, too, had a John in my name, I figured I’d call myself Jed. I asked everybody in my class to call me that, but none of them ever did. Except Paolo. I don’t know why he humored me and indulged my nonsense, but he did, and for the rest of the time we’ve known each other, all the way to adulthood, I was Jed.

We lost touch after high school, save for a sporadic meetups and messages, including a memorable one concerning a piece I wrote online about a company he used to work with. For the most part, though, we never got to reconnect. The last time I saw him was a couple of months ago, when I ran into him inside a shopping mall. We exchanged the usual niceties and offered up vague plans about making time to see each other for real, as casual acquaintances with tenuous connections (which we were at that point) often do. But, as expected, it never happened.

Senior year class photo. Paolo is in the second row from the top, fifth guy from the left. I'll let you figure out where I am

And now it never will. When I saw a common friend and classmate post about Paolo’s passing on social media, I was stunned and stared at the screen longer than I should have. He was around my age (although in truth I’m a couple of years younger than everyone else in my batch) and weren’t we too young to die? I knew from Paolo’s own social media posts that he had a wife and young son, and isn’t that just tragic, to be blessed with a family for the briefest of moments and then leave them so suddenly? We were supposed to catch up and I genuinely thought we had plenty of time to do just that, but now we’re never going to get that chance, and isn’t that just unfair?

These things always happen—it takes something as unfortunate and serious as somebody dying to yank us out of the little bubble of comfort and contentment we’ve created for ourselves about our little lives. Without actual tragedy to jolt us out of our stupor, we’d constantly operate under the delusion that tomorrow’s going to be exactly the same as today—that we’ll wake up, get our morning coffee, go to work, hand in that report, get yelled at by the boss, eat our lunch, gossip with our co-workers, buy that shirt online, see our boyfriend/girlfriend/friend/imaginary significant other, watch an episode of that new Netflix show, brush our teeth, sleep, and then do it all over again the next day. But when we hear of the death of somebody close to us, we instantly realize how it can seem arrogant and even pointless to make plans for next year, next month, even next week.

The first and only time I was able to make it to a Christmas get-together with my high school batchmates. Paolo's the guy in white wearing glasses in the back, first from the left

Paolo’s death broke me out of that fantasy. Not that I believed that I’d live forever and that I can do whatever I want for the foreseeable future, but I’ve been so caught up with life’s extraneous details that I’ve forgotten the sobering reality that the future is never guaranteed. Annie may have sung about the sun coming out tomorrow, but what do you expect from a wide-eyed, 11-year-old girl? For a man now in his mid-40s, I, too, can still be idealistic and appreciate the fact that, yes, the sun will rise and set, but I’ve also hardened enough to realize that that’s not going to happen for everyone. For some of us, life, quite literally, will suddenly stop. And that’ll be it.

Here's the thing: the sudden death of a friend may have shaken me to my core, but even if that hadn’t happened, I’ve started to seriously confront my own mortality this year, perhaps for the first time ever.

Jonas and I enjoying Paolo and Rely's duet

I’ve been having this recurring medical issue in recent months. I’ve had it checked and the doctor says it’s nothing to be concerned about. I don’t even feel it’s there on most days, but when it reappears it can hurt like a motherfucker. Couple that with chronic hyperacidity and occasional headaches and I’m often grappling with panic and paranoia. As Vicky Miner put it, sometimes I feel like I’m two sneezes away from the hospice. Of course, the fact that I’m also suffering from creaky limbs and joints, get fatigued at the slightest physical exertions, and tend to forget the names of people I meet two seconds after saying hello makes me think about the obvious—that I’m aging, and rapidly.

Then I hear about the people who really did kick the bucket way sooner than they should have and I’m overcome with a flood of emotions. I’m confused and angry that their lives had been cut so short; grief-stricken, of course, about the loved ones they leave behind and their dreams left unfulfilled; and maybe a little bit panicked and, yes, scared, that maybe my own number is coming up.

When artist and illustrator Robert Alejandro died in early November, I went back and watched the interview he did for us three years ago, soon after his cancer diagnosis. “I don't want to waste any more time not loving myself,” he said. “I'm going to love myself. I'm going to love everything about me. I don't care what other people say.”

That stuck with me because, when I take a step back and examine the life I’ve been given, I realize that so much of it is wasted on things that don’t even matter in the grand scheme of things. Yes, we need to attend to matters related to our profession and interact with people we barely know in order to sustain our needs, but beyond that, it’s shocking how much time and energy we spend on the truly superficial and inconsequential: holding a grudge or picking fights against people whose actions and opinions don’t really matter; spending a lifetime doing things or surrounded by people who cause us discontent and harm; basically sacrificing our physical, mental, and emotional well-being in order to impress, appease, or earn the approval of others we deem unworthy to begin with.

It can’t be helped, of course; the realities of life often allow or even require us to immerse ourselves in the petty and shallow. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s that an awareness of situations that require significant attention on my part helps to channel those efforts only to the deserving and meaningful. That includes focusing my energies on things like:

- Building closer relationships with the people that have become part of the main cast in my life. That means spending more time with them, making an effort to be present when they need me, and understanding that trusting them and becoming vulnerable with them is the only way to cultivate a more meaningful relationship with them.

- Expanding my knowledge of the world around me. I’m trying to read more books (I think I only read five this year) and watch more educational content on YouTube and social media, on topics that fascinate me like history, geography, literature, and the arts. Admittedly, I’m already quite hooked on social media (something I definitely need to work on), but I want to feel like I’m feeding my mind with worthwhile content on the moments I’m not mindlessly scrolling through my Facebook or Instagram feed.

- And doing more things that ultimately leave me with feelings of satisfaction and joy. Stuff like going on long drives to the beach, listening to more music, checking out a new restaurant or bar, seeing more of the world by traveling, taking my dog out on walks, writing more. I’d like to get back to doing more volunteer work, like I did a few years ago, because that always feels good.

If my time comes to an abrupt end, I hope I'd be able to say that I lived life as best as I could—deliberately, passionately, and without regrets. At this point in my life, there really isn’t any time to waste. To me, that is the definition of living, and perhaps my way of honoring Paolo, and the memory of all the other people I know who have passed.

(And, in the interest of living life, here are some of my favorite photos from the past year):