33

The Old Testament says a good life should range somewhere between 70 and 80 years. Anything more than that is a bonus. The flipside? Anything less is a ripoff.

So when I received the news earlier today that a good friend of mine had passed away suddenly at 33, my first thought once the initial wave of shock rolled past my incredulous brain was that he was shortchanged. Worse, he was a superb writer who shared his gift with everyone who crossed his path, so the world was shortchanged, too.

I'm still absorbing the sudden loss of a friend with whom I could endlessly discuss the intricacies and difficulties of writing about technology. I find myself thinking about how easily I would pick up the phone and within seconds we'd be bantering about opportunities to use our writers' voices to shed light on the murky convergence point of technology and culture.

Writers often use small groups of trusted friends to "blue sky" their future ideas, to refine what they're going to work on and temperature-check whether an idea should ever see the light of day. When he called me at work for comment on a story he was writing, we would often end up batting around additional ideas for future work. If he was on deadline, the conversation would often continue that evening.

I was privileged to meet him when we were in Florida a couple of years back. When we realized I was going to be vacationing near his home, we arranged to meet for lunch. He came to my in-laws' house with gifts for the kids - stuffed animals that they cherish to this day - and we spent hours chatting about whatever it is that writers chat about. Ever since, we never spoke without him asking about my wife and kids. When I published a column about our youngest son, he sent a painstakingly created, framed four-color treatment of the picture I used to accompany it. He was empathetically kind in a way that most folks today are not.

I had always been a bit of a hybrid. Depending on one's perspective, I was either a journalist with a bent for technology or a technologist who could write. Either way, he got it, and speaking with him helped me realize that my skills were a gift and an opportunity, and not a curse. I became a better writer, a better person, because I knew him. It was just my luck that I got to cross his path and become his professional collaborator and friend.

His name was David Garrett. He was 33 years-old. He was ripped off. So were we.