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Goodbye, Old Friend

Over the Chinese New Year weekend, I bade goodbye to a friend, an old friend, a beautiful friend. It’s the reason things have been a bit out of order over here. It’s the reason this year has begun on a very strange note.

It’s been difficult, more so for some others than myself, surely, but difficult nonetheless.

I remember when the news hit on Saturday morning, and though we’d all in a way seen it coming, I can’t say that it wasn’t unexpected. I’d woken up that morning and I had done a whole bunch of things before my dad came by with his phone and asked if he was right about his interpretation of a message. He wasn’t, I told him, and just to be sure, he made a call to check; but by that time, it had all descended upon us like dust.

We did our best. In fact, I was fine until this afternoon. It was all extremely unreal, though. Friends, relatives, strangers, all under one banner. And I watched these half-familiar faces, faces from all those years ago. It humbles you to think that so much has happened to you in the time since then, and so much more must have happened to them all. And yet, in spite of this grand divergence, there they all were, there we all were, sitting together in a curious unity, talking about the things that didn’t really matter, and helping each other to move on. And he was there throughout it all, lying there, imbuing the occasion if not with blessings then simply with a purpose.

These are human things. You gather, you huddle, you hold each other because it’s the only thing you know how to do. This is how we live.

Today, I finally wept again. Before it, I made up my mind that I would do whatever I could not to, but of course it didn’t work. There were others who cried too, and some who didn’t, but in all of them you could see an exceptional and yet not uncommon courage. These things overtake us. They challenge us and humble us. They remind us of the little we can do. Yet, these people, they don’t give in. They hang in there. They remember and mourn, but refuse to be broken. It was a message that this shared friend of ours knew well. He didn’t always have the words for it, but if you had just met him, you’d know. You’d know.

Of course he wouldn’t want us to cry, but in a way, I was glad that I did, because through the tears, I saw his smile again.

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© 2010 a modest odyssey.