If I could say one thing to my dead friend today I would say this
My friend died, this month, last year.
Yes, it’s been a year. He was my mentor, my teacher but mostly my friend. Godfather to my children. Nightwalker and talker to my husband ( the only person, your husband speaks to, sweetheart, he would often say.) Like everything he did, he planned his going, just like he did most things, meticulously. Talking to me about it, for months before.
About his disease, that particular strain of cancer he had, the treatment, how it was going or more like how it was not going, when it would end, how it would all end.
That last year, his eyes would tear up often. Reciting Browning’s ‘Memorabilia’ that he knew by heart. Remembering his mother, her grace, even in her last days in bed, sick from Parkinson's. Talking about his favorite books, movies, series. Never, when he spoke about dying though. He was clear-eyed and at his most lucid when he would talk about his own death.
He accepted the inevitability of his disease. It must have been hard. He lived alone in another city. It must have taken a lot of work, a lot of research, a lot of going back and forth in his head, pacing up and down in his room. I can only imagine. By the time he came to visit, the work was done. There was clarity in those eyes. I would never look in those eyes and see hope. If I did, it was because I saw my eyes, mirrored in his. My need to see hope.
I shoved research back into his face, His sneering face. There. There. There. Never lose hope. Be positive. The end is the beginning.
That’s what they all say. The cancer slayers. You can be one too.
“Don’t give me this shit. I know what I have.” He would say.
Very soon, I didn’t know what to say to him. If I called him and asked “How are you?” the conversation would be over even before it began. How did I expect him to be? He was dying, remember?.
I learned. Not fast enough but I learned. To skip that surprisingly insensitive nonconversation starter of a question. How are you was replaced by What you doing? Then there would be talk of some new writing, a new book or a new series he had begun. Not one word more than necessary would be spoken. If I had something to say, I couldn’t dawdle, I had to say it upfront. We began to have ‘ efficient’ phone conversations.
There wasn’t a crisis in my life for more than twenty years that he didn't know about. A long, long, time back I decided that I needed someone I would listen to. Without doubt, without question. It was him I knew I wanted to listen to. He just knew better than I did, what I should do when I was stuck when I was dithering when I didn't want to listen to myself.
As he became more and more ill, I began to let go. I picked and chose what I went to him with.
I learned to depend on myself a little more. I heard his voice in my head say yeah if I were you, I would do that.
I would say back. Yo. Done. No conversation required. You chill, buddy. This one, I’m not troubling you with.
That’s the other thing. He wasn’t the kind of friend who just listened. He became. He imbibed. He bloody fretted. There were issues I would dismiss but he would continue to fret about. Bringing them up every now and then to see where I had left them. I could escape my problems. He couldn’t. That’s the kind of friend he was.
I didn’t know it then but I know it now. He planned my self- dependency. My go-to myself. My weaning- off him.
He was an advertising creative director, the best in his time. With an eye and instinct for planning very few creative people have. He took that same skill and let it help him and me and I’m sure all the people he loved and cared about. He planned how we would cope after he was gone. I’m sure he did.
When he went, I was sitting in an airport, having a beer. Looking forward to meeting him in Delhi, at my home, sitting at the round dining table, his favorite place in the house. He had called earlier to say he would be waiting for me to arrive.
There was a call from my husband. Who had waited as long as he could. There was a statement delivered. It was done. He was gone.
The tears came in spurts. Here and there. In the queues at the airport. At taking off. Over the dinner tray. Finally, a good cry when I saw my husband and daughters, up, waiting for me. They were dry-eyed by then.
I haven’t cried much since then.
“ Enough. ” I hear him say. “ Don’t give me this shit.” Clearly his favorite line.
The grieving has been going well, without fuss, without shit. I find I can talk about him, clear-eyed, laughing even, glad and grateful.
I seek him often. I find him often too. In his favorite poets and authors. In random, bizarre occurrences. A dream just before my daughter’s birthday which he always attended. Photos. Letters. Posts. In the way, Al Pacino delivers his dialogues. In so many of the things, he left behind. Including his voice in my head.
If I could tell him one thing today, I would say this: hey, you know what, I’m ok. You’re not here and that’s ok.
And I would recite the last few lines of the poem he knew so well.
I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand’s-breadth of it shines alone
’Mid the blank miles round about:
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.
Rest well, old friend. You are well remembered. No shit.
‘
