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This is one of my favorite photos of us together — back in our hotel after sightseeing and Don Quijote-ing, looking ridiculous in our ponchos while everyone else on that rainy autumn night in downtown Kyoto looked so sleek with their umbrellas and coats and boots. We told ourselves as we hauled our comically large shopping bags, next time we won’t be looking like actual garbage bags. Next time, we’d be poised and fashionable as those Japanese office ladies. 

We’ve always been so in synch. You inspired me to learn, to wonder, to try to get more out of life. You showed me so many cool things, and we never ran out of stuff to talk about and obsess over. We used to give each other long, stupid letters on rolls of paper used to print receipts, telling each other R’hllor knows what. (Probably me rambling about Jimmy Alapag, what to put in the school paper, and can we please watch A Series of Unfortunate Events in the cinema after the monthly exam next week?) 

 Even when days got lonely and busier as we grew older, I was always comforted by the fact that you were just there. We’d always be amazed by our instincts, our ESP as we called it, how we often already knew what the other was thinking or planning on doing, even if we’re apart. 

Now you’re somewhere I can’t reach you and I don’t even know why I’m writing this. You already know all of it. I know you know how shattered my heart feels right now. I know you know that I’m not sure how I will be on the other side of this disorienting, gut-wrenching grief. I know you know how confused I am now — you’ve always been the one with the ideas and the instructions. I know you know I would give anything to scheme and laugh and explore with you one more time. 

 Just two weeks ago, there was never any doubt in my mind that we’d go on another adventure like this. Many more, over many, many years, until we grow old. Because I know I wouldn’t care if I looked silly or fumbled or second-guessed myself. Because I know I would try anything if I know I would be trying it with you. But there won’t be another next time, and I — and all of us who love you dearly — will try to live with that. 

 I miss you every day.

I dreamt of you

I dreamt of you before I woke up that day. I remembered it the day after, but I was able to see you still clearly. You got up from your work chair, turned around and smiled at me. How much I wish that dream was longer, or that you told me something, or that I was able to tell you something, anything at all. I wish that dream was real, that I had been able to see you in person again, that we got to coop up in your room to talk, sort our stocks, plan and listen to Bastille on loop one last time.

When I got the news, there was not a comprehensible thought in my mind. I broke down, asked Gab questions I knew he did not have the answer to. I blamed myself, blamed everyone else, shouted to high heavens and asked why it had to be you. We were just on a three-way four-hour video call mere days ago. We were waiting for an update to a game you taught me about just two weeks ago. It was too sudden. It couldn’t have been true. It couldn’t have been you.

You were telling us your throat was itchy, but it was probably just your regular flu season sore throat. Then the on-off fever happened. But it’s alright, you got checked and you had the meds. A few days later you began telling us that you’d gotten tired so easily, all the time. But it’s okay, you even had an oxygen tank in your room, just in case, you said. And then your updates became shorter, fewer and farther in between. I didn’t want to bother you, and we were hoping you were just resting and recuperating.

The night before I couldn’t sleep, but it was for the wrong reasons. I couldn’t sleep because I haven’t heard back from you, about something as insignificant as a bank account number. It was earlier in the afternoon when we last exchanged messages. I couldn’t sleep as easily as I normally would, but sleep I did. I heard the news well into the morning the next day. It was a Sunday. Gab was on his laptop, I was on my phone. Carlo told us. My world just stopped.

The magnitude of this grief was something I have not experienced before and I hope I never will again for a long, long time. Please forgive me, forgive us, if we talk about you all the time. If I overshare with others the things we talked to each other about in confidence. Please forgive me if I am still trying to piece together what happened the last few days. Please forgive me if my heart is full of regrets for the things I wish I had done for you. I know how much you didn’t want to bother people. 

I have been told, by well-meaning people, to just accept it and move on. As if it were that easy. As if choosing to “move on” is something you can do just days after one of the most important people in your life dies. Now I know what people mean when they say they want their departed loved ones to “visit” them in their dreams. It is surrendering to sleep and pinning my hopes to see the version of you created by my subconscious. It’s not really you. But it’s all I have now. I still have so much to say.

// 12 September 2021 //