Benjamin Stranger

Benjamin Stranger passed from the realm of the responsive on the afternoon of Thursday the 14th, when, having received seventeen unread messages across four separate applications, he placed his phone face-down on a coffee table and simply did not return. He was, by all accounts, fine. He just needed a minute.

The minute, at time of publication, has lasted approximately eleven months. His phone remains face-down. The coffee table bears no comment.

He was known for his strong opinions about things he had not fully researched, his ability to recommend a film he had not actually seen, and a laugh that arrived slightly too late to be polite and slightly too loud to ignore. He made excellent coffee and mediocre decisions, often in the same morning.

He is remembered most clearly in the context of a specific incident which shall not be named here, and least clearly in the context of group photographs, in which he invariably blinked.

• Several group chats in which he remains technically present
• A half-finished project described as "nearly done" since early 2022
• At least three streaming subscriptions he has forgotten to cancel
• One (1) sourdough starter, status unknown
• The ambient impression that he will definitely come to the next one

• His sleep schedule, lost in the winter of 2017
• Any reliable sense of what day it is
• The charger he lent someone at a party whose name he cannot remember

Benjamin asked, in what his associates interpreted as a joke but which has aged ambiguously, that any memorial be "low-key, no big thing, just people who actually matter." He then named eleven people and a dog. He has since disputed this account entirely.

In lieu of flowers, he requests that you simply say what you were going to say. He is, he stresses, listening. He just may not respond immediately. Or at all. But he is listening.