For a beautiful friend...

It seems like yesterday. The very first time we met, we talked about school. I could see the excitement in your eyes as you talked about the biggest accomplishment of your life. Nuclear medicine – research on treatments for cancer patients. You thought it would be a good program for me to consider because of my volunteer work with cancer patients. You had big dreams. They were beautiful ones; a desire to help people and make a difference. But, all I saw was another U of Ter trying to convince me that I made the right choice by going to U of T. I had seen you before many times at the pharmacy and thought maybe I should say “hi” to a fellow Pakistani. But there was always this slight rudeness in the way you spoke that I always changed my mind. You knew every time I dropped by pharmacy that I was here to see my friend. So you would never come up and say the usual “May I help you?”?

I am glad that we got a chance to finally meet and talk that afternoon you were going to your work party with my friend. It really seems like yesterday. I felt I was wrong and that you sounded much nicer in person than in the pharmacy. I am sorry for ever assuming that. I can’t exactly recall when and how you became a part of our little gang but I remember the very first time you came over was on my birthday party. You were late. We hardly knew each other but you looked very happy for me (at least in the pictures for sure). We looked at those pictures for months over and over again. We looked at them to catch all those expressions of yours that we didn’t pay attention to when you were among us. We laughed at you for not knowing any of the paindu songs we were singing on my birthday. But you still did well. I am sure you were thinking if we are even sane.

You became a part of us. A very important part of our lives. But we did not know that and we never paid attention to it. When you would stay quiet, we would think you are shy. We would encourage you to become just as silly as we were but we didn’t know that you were burdened by a secret so huge and painful than we could ever imagine. You told us that you wanted to hang around with us to experience something you had never experienced before. You were in a rush to experience all that you had missed out on when you were studying and working. What was the rush?
We did not think you would make it another day when we first came to see you at the hospital. There were no signs of life in your eyes. They were blank. I wanted to help you hold your cup as your hands shivered but I was too shocked. We were all too shocked. We wondered if you were a secret smoker because of the lung cancer diagnosis. We felt outraged seeing you in the ER with doctors assuming nothing can be done. It was an extremely helpless feeling. I felt that for the very first time in my life. We were always taught gaining control over difficult situations is the way to go. How were we supposed to know that some things are just out of our control. There are some things which ARE impossible. One of those things is to stop someone from leaving.

But you survived. Not for too long but for some time. You survived to show us what strength and patience actually mean. You survived to show us that life is really too short. You let us keep lying and give you false hopes of life despite of being very well aware of where things were heading. Not once you said we don’t know how it feels to be in your shoes. We had so many questions. We wanted to know why you hid it. We wanted to know how and why it happened. We wondered for months after your death whether it was due to some radiation accident in your lab. We wondered over your emails for days and nights. We looked at your pictures for days and days and saw that you looked sick. Why were we not able to see it when you were alive? We now understand that you had to go. We now keep ourselves prepared that one day we will have to go.

You made a difference in our lives just the way you had hoped and dreamt. It was because of your courage that I had some courage to go through pain without feeling like “why me”. It is because of you that we hold each other even more tightly and value our friendships. It’s because of you we are able to feel someone’s pain. It’s because of you we remember our ultimate purpose and destination. It’s because of you we know what loss feels like. You will always be missed Arooj.