The texts from someone who’s gone become the most important texts on your phone. Be kind in the ones you send.

An ordinary message can change value completely depending on what comes after it. Most of what people keep is not profound: a plan for Thursday, a bad joke, a question about dinner. What makes those matter later is only that they are the last ordinary thing, written in a voice that sounded exactly like the person.

None of that is a warning, and it does not mean every message has to be perfect. It means the throwaway ones are the record. Sending something warm today takes a few seconds and is not a thing anybody ends up regretting.