Going Through life

Last Thursday, I bumped into Mr. Koonce, the program director of the PI Program I'm working for as an academic coach. He gave me a friendly pat on my shoulders and asked me how things are going, where I was going.
I told him i was a little tired, but doing ok, and heading to the copy machines to copy some homework sets for my students.
And he said: "You know where they are? you know how to get to them?"
I said:"Oh yeah, Katie already showed me how to use them, thank you =) "

Next day, I met him again at our staff meeting, and he nodded at me "so did you get to the machines alright? Got everything done?"
I said: "Yes I did, thank you"

Two days later, on Monday, I received an email from the office.
Mr. koonce had passed away...

I was shocked. Suddenly, I wished that i wasn't always in such a hurry when I bumped into him, and maybe i could have talked to him a little longer on Thursday. Though we were never close, he was always very kind to me when we met.

Then I realized, sometimes, we bump into a person/ an acquaintance on the road and we nod, smile, say:"Hi how are you?" and leave hurriedly to wherever we're going to. We never give a second thought. This is always the case when I met Mr. Koonce around the business school.

If its not a family member or a close friend, we usually just push their existence to a corner of our minds, until the next time we meet. We hardly feel any regrets.

Unless we found out that he died the next day.

It feels... weird, and sad. i've never talked to anyone two days before he died, especially if he had been so kind to me. It's just so sudden.