An old friend passed away this morning.
Brain cancer. I never knew until the message dropped in last week from one of our friends. Guru's in the hospital, and it's bad. So bad that later they told me it might be his last night. I took a cab from my place, wondering what to say when I saw him, what to do. Could I make him laugh? Could we share a few of those memories that we'd made together, the five of us, six years ago in MDIS?
The answer was no. He breathed through a mask, his chest rising and falling exaggeratedly. Clustered around his bed were friends and family members, and most painful of all, his wife, whom he'd married in July. I thought that he was gazing at her, with bloodshot, half-open eyes. As I approached, I realised he wasn't seeing anything. He wasn't even conscious.
Ever so often his wife would take his hand in hers, lean in to kiss him on the temple, whispering in his ear. I just stared. Once, she turned and looked at me. I don't know what I saw in her eyes, but I pursed my lips and looked at the floor. What could I say, or do, for her? I didn't even know her, never met her. All I'd known was that he got married, and we were all congratulating him on Facebook.
We'd tried to make plans over the last six years, to meet up again and have potato wedges with chilli crab dip from Muddy Murphy's Irish Pub. Or the char kway teow in Queenstown, near the MDIS Unicampus where we spent many afternoons laughing over the dumbest things. He once told us the grossest story about bean sprouts. I never liked sprouts before that, and I liked them even less after.
We were always too busy to meet up after the diploma ended. Why?
As the three of us sat outside the ward, we recounted our experiences together. We realised that we had never taken a picture together, our slacker project group. Yong was telling GP about how the lecturer had said that the groups couldn't be made up solely of guys or girls. Yong lost the oya peiya som, and had to approach me to join them.
I never thought "the rest is history" would be such a painful phrase.
We had two girls with our group for one of our subjects and secretly ridiculed them about their e-mail usernames. Pink Baby and Reddstars. Or was it Reddstarrs? Or Redstarrs? I don't even remember their names, just the way Guru said their usernames in that accent of his, Queen's English. He told us that nobody understood him when he came back to Singapore from Scotland, because of the Scottish accent, which he painstakingly got rid of, assimilating himself back into our culture, no matter how stupid he thought we were.
"It's football, not soccer," he'd say disapprovingly when the topic of the English Premier League cropped up. "Only you Singaporeans would support a team that isn't even in your country."
Tiger beer is lager. Old Speckled Hen, the amber liquid topped with its thick, creamy layer of white foam, is ale. They're different. Don't call them beer. And for heaven's sake, don't order Kilkenny's at Muddy's, you'll just look like an idiot. His opinions were blunt, and he never minced his words.
When he felt like making us laugh he'd turn on the most exaggerated Indian accent ever, bobbing his head and taking on a heavy, gravelly voice.
"Mariaaaaa," he'd call. "Vaaaat are you doing?" It was the only time he ever called me by my first name, after he'd discovered that my middle name was Kristin.
"Kristin!" he exclaimed. "That's my all time favourite lass name. Maria sucks. I'll call you Kristin from now on."
He was an asshole, albeit a funny one.
"I can't stand it when I state what I think of something and someone goes YA!!! I'm like, get your own opinions!"
I wonder if I answered that with YA!!!! I don't remember now.
"Oh my god you looked so much better in your old pictures. You need to grow out your hair so it's wavy again. And dye it brown. Your hair now is shit. I would totally have dated you back then. But not now."
Gee thanks. Fuck you, Guru.
Of course I never said that then. I didn't swear then, I was Christian.
"You know, nobody in class likes you," he said once.
"Oh?" I answered.
"Yeah nobody can stand you. They're all like, what's her problem? And I just tell them, you know, she's Christian, and then they go, oh, that makes sense. That explains it." I laughed so hard at that. I still laugh at it. I can still hear his voice. He was usually all happy and cheerful with a heavy dose of sardonicism, it was easy to miss the depression, the insomnia that frustrated him, the slashes on his forearm, old scars. I had them too, but we never really talked about the reasons why.
I remember him calling me late one night.
His friend had tried to commit suicide, getting himself run over by a bus. Guru asked me if I could help pray for his friend. He was an agnostic; he didn't believe in God. He needed a good Christian to pray, he said, when I asked him why he couldn't pray himself. I didn't even know the guy. Guru felt strange, praying only in this time of need, knowing he'd turn his back on God again later. He made me promise to say the prayer. I prayed as soon as I got off the phone, after telling him it was never too late to come back. I prayed for his friend, and for him.
I'm no longer a Christian. I wonder if he was still agnostic till the end.
He was smart. So very smart, acing the exams after a day of studying and a year of fooling around at the back of class. He wanted to be a professor, he told us. Get his double PhD and be one of those brilliant, gruff professors in a university, the kind you read about in books, the kind that inspires you to think. I always thought he'd be great at it. He was always eager to learn. He considered it a huge waste that I wasn't going to finish my degree, going as far as offering to help me pay the thousands of dollars for school fees so I could do it. I didn't take up the offer, of course. How could I ever have paid him back?
He always wanted to learn the violin, he told me once, but it isn't as easy starting late in life when you're left handed. Something we had in common. Years later when I stumbled across a Romanian company that sold lefty violins, I called him up asking if he wanted one. We both never got around to it. But I still have the rest of my life, while he's... Gone. Forever. I'll never see him again.
Yet what is my grief compared to that of his family? How do I say anything to parents who have to bury their son, a woman younger than I am who is already a widow? He touched my life. He was a good friend, a close friend, one I shared many thoughts and experiences with, one I respected. And yet I barely saw him over the past few years except when we bumped into each other. We didn't talk regularly. It's not like we met up much. Or at all. My everyday life will go on, unchanged by his absence. Why do I feel like this? Why does it hurt? I thought I'd accepted that he was good as gone, when I saw him in that state in the hospital, but part of me still hoped for a miracle. For him to wake up, for the cancer to go away. For it to be alright. But it isn't.
Was it the smoking, the drinking? Brain cancer, gosh, it doesn't get much worse than that, does it? All the times I kept nagging them to quit smoking, only to cave and follow them for smoke breaks, breathing in the sickeningly sweet smell of those cherry cigarettes the girls liked, waving smoke out of my face as we sat by the side of the road like bums. I should've nagged more. I should've done a lot more, as a friend.
All these regrets are meaningless if I don't act on them. I have people in my life now, still alive, whom I have to cherish while they're still around. Meanwhile the four of us left of that odd group will continue on. Yong said the other day that time passed so fast. GP has three kids, I'm gonna have my first kid, Lester is still Lester, Yong is still Yong, and Guru is dying. Was dying. Is dead.
If I could see him again, I wouldn't know what to say. Thank you? For being a friend, for having an impact upon my life, for that little bit of change you made, for the times we shared. I will never forget you.
"It well may be that we may never meet again in this lifetime,
So let me say before we part,
So much of me is made from what I learnt from you.
You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart.
And now whatever way our stories end,
I know you have rewritten mine, by being my friend.
... Who can say that I've been changed for the better
But because I knew you
Because I knew you
I have been changed for good."
- For Good, Wicked the Musical
