Only two days ago, I learnt of the passing of someone I’ve known for over 30 years. She was a close friend of my sister and through their friendship, I shared many happy moments as well as some darker days. Learning about her death was not entirely surprising because not only was she not in the best physical health but definitely not the best mental state either. In fact, we are still wondering if this person actually took her own life.
Naturally, my mind has flitted in and out of the past and, despite the sadness, I have found myself smiling at some of the happier and funnier times we all shared. She was often brazen, quite entertaining and yet sometimes annoying – but her intentions were always good and she was dependable when most needed. She was someone who had had a difficult life but had perservered and pulled through. She was staunchly independent having been let down by everyone around her. She was fearless.
It feels strange to talk about her in the past tense. Years ago, when I discovered we both shared the same birthday (she was 6 years older), we never failed to wish each other a happy birthday. It was an annual ritual we engaged in with lighthearted banter and frivolity. If I live to see another birthday, it will feel very surreal not to send a message to her for the first time in ages. Who knew that this year was the last time I’d be doing that?
And yet, life has to go on. Not because we don’t care or have already emptied ourselves of compassion or sadness, but because it simply has to. There will be a heaviness that will weigh upon our minds as we continue about our daily routine and soon enough, that too will diminish. It’s not selfish to live but we have no other choice. What good would it do to curl up and stop functioning? Emotional pain is a parcel humans always carry with them, permanently fixed to their person. Sometimes that parcel comes unravelling and its contents pour forth and we are catapulted back to the recesses of our memories and paralysed in time. But not for long. The future beckons and duty calls. And so that parcel is neatly wrapped up again but not forgotten. It waits for its next unravelling over time.
I do believe friendships today amongst young people are of a different calibre than those formed eons ago, before the internet was a thing and before it was all too easy to click a button and send an effortless and distracted response to someone. There is no real concerted effort any more to try and build meaningful bonds between people. We have robots and AI and home delivery that have ruined relationships and made human transactions at worst, non-existent, and at best, dispassionate.
True friendship is a rarity nowadays. Like the kind my sister’s friend brought and which was reciprocated over the years. It’s still hard to believe she has left this world but, knowing that had she been right next to us, she’d have scolded us for feeling miserable, I take comfort that she would have wanted to see us happy even though she could not be herself.
I never imagined I’d be writing a blog post about such a topic but then I guess the learning that life has to offer is never done.
