Death has a weird way of coming to you. For me death has always occurred to someone who is much older. In the last few years, I lost 3 uncles in 3 straight years. Then I lost my great-grandmother and grandmother. For me, maybe that’s why I never felt genuinely effected because I was either too young or too still naïve in the world to understand death.
But this summer, I received news that one of my friends has passed away. In an instant, my heart was gripped with fear. Losing a friend who is roughly the same age as me never did occur to me. Never did I think that death would visit a friend of mine at that young, yet I should know by now that death do happen it happens to people. But in an instant that very night, my sense of security crumpled around me as I drove home that very night.
I called to a few of my friends and the funeral was tomorrow. Tomorrow? That was rather too soon for someone who just passed away. I thought about legal procedures and I wonder why the family wanted to get the burial done so quickly. Nevertheless, tomorrow came and I went to the funeral. At the funeral, I was reunited with some of my friends and some I have yet to seen since I returned home. Even though I joked and laughed with them on jokes we shared, I felt wrong and this feeling stayed within me for the whole day. Maybe because it’s was a funeral of a different religion and there was only the feeling of sadness and despair that hung so heavily in the air.
Once the funeral was done, I drove away with a heavy feeling and even though I had concert to go to. I could not shake the feeling that I should be mourning and not be enjoying yet. But like many events in the world, the only way was to move on. Eventually I moved on with her death because the dead stay dead, there isn’t anything I could have done.
I now write this because it is time I honour her now as a memory. A memory and a lesson. A memory of which she was to me and too many others. How we all enjoy her being around us and how funny she was. That will forever be engraved to my memory and I will not forget that. A lesson to me that death will visit the people around me when their time has come.
But do I fear death? I’m not too sure at the moment. At the moment I’m not prepared to meet death. I hope to meet death and be like the Perevell brother who chooses to remain from death till he was ready to meet him like an old friend. The normal man does not wake up every day and think it is his last day on earth. But isn’t that a luxury at times? The fact that we are still able to plan out our lives ahead of us and be hopeful of the future.
But thanks to my dear friend who has gone ahead of me, I will still remember you every time I see something that reminds me of you and chuckle to myself. Now everyday seem different, I see things differently, I live maybe more on the edge now? Whenever or not, this event has influence my life, I sense because of your death, change has come to me. Right now I won’t know what the change will be as it will be slow and subtle. But like many life lessons we learned, it is only when we look back that we can trace what has happened to us and then only can we piece together the puzzle.
And every June 23rd, I will take the time to reflect and remember you of the brief short time we interacted with one another. It is my heart’s desire that we would one day met again. So I won’t say goodbye because I hate those but rather I will say “Till we met again someday.”
“Death is but next the great adventure.” Dumbledore.