I think I lost a good online friend by not looking at my notifications for a while

It's just like the title said, but earlier this year I had made a really good friend via this website. We talked almost daily until about three months ago. My friend fell on some hard times and it felt like the more I tried to be supportive the worse it ended up being for him. In his own words he "fell off the face of the Earth". I started ignoring my notifications because it became disappointing not seeing anything from him. When I checked in today I saw he had finally messaged me something, and it was an apology for falling off the face of the Earth. However, I also noticed that his account says deleted. I went into incognito mode to double check whether the account had actually been deleted or not and it does come up as deleted. I wonder, if I had checked just a little sooner would his account still be active? This sucks, and I'm glad I can get this off my chest here. Is it stupid to hope that he sees this?