His favorite question always echoes: What’s the plan? The death of a friend left a heavy silence behind. If someone had been invited to dinner, it would have been obvious the plan was simply to eat—yet he would have returned home asking what the plan was, and no one could offer an answer. Now that unanswered question lingers in the air, stubborn and unresolved.
-What is the plan?
What if his curiosity extended beyond the surface, asking whether there is a plan behind any plan? That thought brings to mind a funeral home and the idea that every plan might hide another layer of intention. So perhaps the question wasn’t entirely pure: what was the plan behind this trip to the Picos de Europa? What is the purpose of meeting each year on the band’s first death anniversary? If the friend had learned to speak before birth, he would have viewed the world as a place where organs form, and he would ask what the plan was. One can imagine the medical team arriving for birth while the parents still listened to the newborn, naked and hopeful, asking the same question.
-What is the plan?
The plan for her life began with breastfeeding, then the transition to baby food, then daycare, then school. He was young, they say, studied law, challenged the Post Office, married, and had two children. He followed a disciplined path, yet what lay behind it all remained unclear. Perhaps there was nothing more than a void that everyone tried to fill in the best way possible. Could our friend have carried a secret wisdom, a quiet sage hidden beneath the surface? That question came to mind as the coffin closed. He appeared in a dark suit, a white shirt, and a black tie, a uniform of mourning that felt almost ceremonial. It seemed hard to choose the right clothes to shroud a life in its final moment. Among all the people the speaker had known, none wore sweatpants, not even Fede, who wore them with difficulty even in sleep.
After the funeral, the close circle gathered again at the cemetery gate, car keys in hand, sensing a new rhythm in their friendship. A moment later, the thought reappeared, and they laughed. They left the graveside to swap stories, sharing the best moments from a life filled with lighthearted, sometimes ridiculous, memories. They went out to eat, reclaiming joy by retelling the silly, stubborn, and bright episodes that made their friend who he was. In that act of simple gathering, the plan was to remember, to honor, and to keep moving forward together, even as the lost voice left a quiet ache behind.