Grief slapped me awake last night.
My phone rang just after 3am from No Caller ID. A male voice. Garbled accent. Sorry, wrong number, he said.
I hung up thinking, who’s making calls at this hour? And then I looked at my texts.
It took a foggy second or two to make sense of what I was seeing – a sepia-tinted image of my beloved friend, Ray alongside the words,
‘…another good human gone. Way too soon.’
What?! No. It’s a prank. We just messaged over a week ago. A few keystrokes later and I’m on a tribute page dedicated to his memory. But I still fell for futility and sent Ray a text.
Raymou?!
Straw clutching of the highest order because fading hope f**ks with you.
Raymond Christodoulou and I met in a London ad agency 20+ years ago. He was a brilliant senior copywriter, intuitive, cool and witty beyond measure.
It was love at first write.
We also bonded over our Greekness and when we started writing a screenplay together, planning our limo ride to the movie premiere was just as important as plotting our flick’s twists and turns. Ever the Hellenic dreamers.
Ray loved these Phylosophies and hardly a week went by when he didn’t send me an email bursting with ’embarrassing’ serves of praise and cheerleading,
“Just don’t stop Philosophysing.”
Grief sucks. And when I’m plunged into this murky place, I search for signs, clues, anything that will help me divine sense out of the incomprehensible.
How can my funny, generous, wise and profound, life-loving Ancient Greek be gone?
The sun was starting to rise on my first day without Ray. I looked at my phone again. No Caller ID had rung me at 3:33am. Grief pushed me to look up the meaning of these digits.
Angel Number 333 tells you that the Ascended Masters are near you.
Ha. Figures.
While my friend didn’t part seas or turn water into wine (though that would’ve probably been his favourite Messianic trick), Ray absolutely mastered the gentle art of being a magnificent human.
Our world isn’t a darker place now that he’s gone. It’s brighter because Ray lived in it.
Raymou, I will love you and miss you more than all my Phylosophies will ever say.
Always.
© Phyllis Foundis 2026