Losing the first friend
Only a few ridiculously fortunate among us still have their first friends in their lives. All others have lost them - to different cities, to different schools, to their other friends, to lives that have happily or otherwise drifted apart, and to the terribly unforgiving immutable deaths. There is something about our first friends that's unforgettable even to our unformed minds that yet haven't developed an infatuation for memories and lust for nostalgia. Our first friends teach us that if we're ready to take risks with ‘strangers’, there is some sense of safety beyond the familiar hugs and kisses of those that have birthed us. Our first friends witness the unconscious discomfort and the humanly compulsive instinct we have to trust and love them. At times, they put their soul into our first real laughs, the first true tears, and everything in between that the world hasn't prepared us to feel yet. They have seen us at our most innocent, most beautifully uncivilized, most uncunningly inarticulate, and yet most lively expressive. Our first friends know us in a way that is maybe impossible for others to imagine us in. Or at least my first friend knew me in that way.
My memory of my grandfather's death is misty in factual details, regardless of its persistent emotional haunting. Not because I was too young, or because his death was sudden. On the contrary, I was old and quite prepared. Yet, all my age and preparation failed me. I became the same child that he probably saw on my first day when he became my friend. There are details to our friendship that would require over 21 years to describe. But a couple of days before I had to stop talking to him forever, we chatted. I was going through something where my reality and desires were poles apart. I was hoping for some breakthrough. I was wishing for a memorable counsel with a dramatic imprint. But he had nothing much to say. My friend, whom I had unapologetically depended on my entire life, just told me to live through it. It was underwhelming. It was one of those memories that you so desperately want to change. The kind that you yearn to be a story and yet it is nothing more than a moment in the passing. More of a blackout between the scene change than a diligently scripted plot point. I knew that this would be our last conversation where we both treated each other as beings that don't exactly have to do their goodbyes just yet. And maybe that's why I expected more. I wanted to have my first friend tell me something that I had never heard before. But he instead chose to say what he had always said - 'you have to live through it'.
As I went ahead and away, to another country, times temporarily became further difficult to live. But I knew I had to live through it. The disappointing memory, the non-story, and the underwhelming goodbye kept me alive, maybe even a little more than just alive. It gave me the delight of knowing that whatever happens there's always going to be more to life than I had lived before. That realization is actually quite bland for the sane and the wise, but it's a delicacy for others. My first friend's words kept murmuring in me. They told me that for quite a long I had belonged to the ridiculously fortunate. And that although that time was now over, I had to live. It's difficult losing people, but it's inescapable losing our first friends. They are the people that have seen the essence of pure life in us when we didn't think too much about living.
