regrets

A good friend from my old RHSM days died over the weekend. He was slightly more than a month away from his 39th birthday.

Sutton was a wonderful person. I’d known him since we were both young kids at RHSM, and since he was always a grade ahead of me he held the enigma of knowing just a tad bit more about the world. He was on of the “faces” of RHSM: a person who you always saw around campus, and if you knew him, he was part of the unique melting pot of the place.

I got to know Sutton as a friend during my high school days, when he was part of my circle of Debate Team friends who spent a lot of time at coffee houses. He was smart, self-assured, witty, occasionally abrasive, but always caring when his friends were involved. Even though he was a serious person, he never took life too seriously: making the most of the moment was one of Sutton’s special talents.

Once we went our separate ways – college and post-college life, after all, happen – I lost touch with Sutton. Even though we both lived in DC in recent years (and in the same neighborhood, to boot), we only recently got back in touch with each other. Sutton had overcome great adversity in recent years, including the loss of his partner back in 2006. But Sutton was working hard to get back into “fighting shape,” still wore a smile and had many great friends – there would have been tons of stuff to talk about. And the one time there was a possibility of meeting up after work, I was totally wiped out and not in a very social mood.

And now I regret the self-veto of the meet-up. Every bit of lethargy, energy-sapped crabbiness and malaise would have been worth the trouble of simply meeting up again and catching up.

I’m glad that many of his RHSM classmates got to hang out with him in June, and that he’d managed to re-connect with our common friends, Heather and Matt, both of whom recently arrived in the DC area. I just wish I’d managed to make the same reconnection.

So rest in peace, Sutton. Your friendship always meant the world to me.