Gayle and I had been friends for a very long time. Three years ago, we had a serious argument about some catty remark she'd made about my wife. I was very offended and basically shut her out of my life. Tonight, I thought about her for the first time in a long time and decided that life was too short to carry a grudge. So I did what most people do in this day and age: I looked her up on Facebook. I sent a "friend" request to her, and included a note that said that after all we had been through together, it's really dumb that we weren't on speaking terms.
I got a response back within an hour.
It wasn't what I expected.
The response came from her son, Anthony. He hadn't realized his mother even had a Facebook account. Her email was being forwarded to his email, he explained, as she had passed away in June 2008 unexpectedly. He'd tried to contact me then, but his email to me had been returned as "undeliverable" (I'd gotten a new email two years ago).
Life really is too short to carry a grudge.
I feel awful.
