An old friend of mine died today.

And it's starting to hit me. Not in an uncontrollable burst of tears way, but in the annoying way how you start to think when someone dies. I can remember things about him I've not remembered since he left school and as I see the scenes play out in my head through smog by pure search lights of remembrance and imagination, I'm looking at the situations in a new light.

It's annoying. I empathise with the dead more than I do the living. Perhaps it's because when you imagine your friends, you remember the funny things they've said, their personality radiates from them. In your mind, they converse without words. Your ideal rendition of them smiling at your jokes, but in reality they contradict those imagined traits. Or maybe that's just me. Each new encounter with them fuels my imagination. How odd then, that I saw him over a year ago and I can picture him clear as day with a smiling face laughing at silly jokes and making his own. I remember him in school classes simply doing what he could: being himself.

I think the saddest thing to me is the suddenness. He had things to do, friends to see, a life to live. It feels so...pointless.