Flashback to a season in my past where I needed to find joy, literally I would look out for anything that made me smile, because otherwise all I would do was curl up anywhere and start crying. So much so, that one day on a lunch with some friends from work, as a joke, I grabbed this keychain from a friend’s car. It was all fun and laughs, but he let me hold on to it. I ended up attaching it to my own car and that lil keychain became my daily car buddy through many solo car-aoke drives.

Today I cleared up my phone’s camera roll, and as I did, I came across a pic of this little keychain that I had behind my car’s rearview mirror. The grainy picture has always been a cutesy random picture that reminded me of my car. But today, when I saw the picture (below is the instagram story from the day), and it held so much more to it.

Last year, I found out that the friend who I got this from, a person younger than me, had passed away. I heard that he was also going through a tough phase in life when he passed. Sad truth was that I hadn’t ever thought of this guy in awhile, when I heard the news. In fact when Facebook had brought a memory with a pic that included our group a while ago, I didn’t share it cuz I went “ahh we hardly talk now!” – but as I look back now, truth is that friendship group helped me through a real tough season by bringing me simple joys of chill lunches & corny mallu jokes. This guy and all the folks in the group, there wasn’t really a friendship that ran deep, but it was a friendship that I needed in the season, to help to remember to smile again, even in the simple things like a noisy bunch to eat lunch with.

Today, this picture has became a bittersweet reminder for me, of how often when living life, even when we don’t really forget people who were (or are) a part of our life, we often do forget to remember them … and hey, if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s probably that everybody appreciates knowing that they are cared for and even remembered, even by a person they may not think of as a closest loved one.

I don’t know what exactly is my point of this post, but maybe it’s just to say this this. I wonder if, on any day we find ourselves remembering a moment with a loved one, perhaps we should be intentional to check on them and to let them know that they’re remembered, when they (and you) are still around to convey it. Because we never know what life holds ahead for us.

Remembering you PP, my Accenture-EMC / mallu gang buddy. R.I.P, friend.