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Will Vogel was not the sort of golfer worth knowing about, unless one wanted to teach their child about the importance of dedication, habit, and routine. Every first and third Sunday of the month, Will would pack up his clubs while his young daughter watched before heading out for the course. He did this despite the lack of improvement seen in his actual score. For Will Vogel, the journey was far more important than the destination, and the effort taken to lower his score was more important than the actual effect on said score.
But for his wife, Felicity Vogel, her husband’s trips out to the course were significant in another way.
“You should invite Phil to go with you next time,” she once said.
Her voice cut through the air, slicing through Will’s concentration as he inspected his clubs. His brow wrinkled in confusion as he repeated the name to himself. He softly muttered it, trying to summon some sort of image or reference for the man his wife spoke of, but nothing came.
“Jessica’s father,” Felicity clarified.
But that did little to help.
“Really, Will,” she cursed. “Our daughter’s friend Jessica,”
“There’s three different Jessica’s in her class,” Will snapped back.
With that, the needless dispute lulled. Neither was wrong, on a technical level. The Jessica in question, a daughter of the man named Phil, was one of the few classmates their daughter had gotten close to, but that was the only way the young girl was distinct. Her name was certainly far from unique.
“I think he’s a golfer too,” Felicity clarified.
Will grimaced, though his beard masked some of the expression. “I’d rather go alone,” he said.
“Will.”
The rebuke was held firmly between his wife’s teeth, but Will could still hear it. “I’m not a fan of the guy,” he confessed.
He put the cover back on the club. His daughter would forever think it was a wedge, but she also didn’t know what that term meant. But once the club was covered again, he started to check the side pockets for tees, balls, sunscreen, and the miscellaneous needs of a golfer who would be out for several hours.
Felicity took a sharp breath in, masking her own feelings which were more in line with her husband’s than she wanted to admit. To her, the man’s personality–or lack thereof–was not the important thing, but friendships between the family members could bolster the friendship of the young girls, a tie that she worried was far more delicate than it should have been.
“But don’t you get lonely out on the course?” Felicity asked.
As she spoke, she snuck a passing glance at their daughter, eyeing a small tear in her father’s golf bag. The young girl pretended not to notice her mother’s look that would be burned into her memory for the rest of her life.
“Not really,” he said.
“So do you meet other golfers there?”
With a huff, he yanked the zipper shut. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Felicity stood there, leaning against the doorway. She didn’t even know what she meant by that. She had her fears and suspicions as many wives do, but she had chosen to keep them to herself. But when she set those concerns aside, her mind was not blank.
“I just can’t imagine going out and being alone for several hours,” she confessed. “It seems sad.”
“It’s not sad. It’s golf.”
“But when you watch golf on TV, there’s no one off by themselves. They have people following them around and other golfers.”
“Those are competitions,” Will pointed out.
And just as before, they found themselves at an impasse, where neither was technically wrong but held fast to incompatible points. And with that incompatibility and the irritation lingering in the air between them, the conversation ended before anything had been accomplished.
Its unfinished business lingered in Felicity’s mind when it lay dormant until it came time to send out the dark news of Will’s passing.
“Did he really not have friends?” Felicity murmured to herself as she and her daughter sat in the front office of their local parish, trying to parse out a headcount that didn’t seem so painfully low.
“No golf friends,” her daughter would say.
It wasn’t a helpful clarification. No golf friends soon became no work friends and no college friends. The men at church who sometimes saw him, who nodded to him as they went about their ways, did not consider themselves his friends. So the list of invites never grew, no matter where they looked. Some staff would remember him at the golf courses he frequented, and a few golfers would remember borrowing a ball or two from him. And yet, no one seemed to have any recollection of him that was not akin to a placeholder in some other memory. It was a glaring gap in the list of funeral attendees and perhaps in the man’s life as a whole.