2. To Those Who Have Loved & Lost

When love left; it felt like a tragedy; be it death or a break up of a relationship. Honestly, I do not know which is worse. I guess it depends mostly on the depth of love you had in the first place. People say you only hurt as much as you loved; I am still trying to figure it out.

I lost a great man who saved my life when I was 18; someone who made me believed bad times never last and I needed to be strong; and I will never be alone again, only to lose him so abruptly when I was 23.

When such tragedy is bestowed upon you at such a tender age, there are times when you thought you will cry forever. You never do. Eventually, sheer physical exhaustion will take over and render you completely helpless and forces you to stop – to settle; to becalm yourself amidst all the mad turbulence of the tragedy that you thought will condemn you beyond repair.

Loss is something which is difficult to come to term with. How do you even start making sense of the entire meaning of it? How do you cope? What will you hold on to now? Everything was gone; hopes, dreams and faith that everything was going to be alright.

But all I could feel when Ben died was loss; a word as empty as it sounds. I looked back and wondered where or when it all went so wrong. Blaming myself every step of the way for every wrong turn and dwell upon millions of what ‘ifs’ and ‘if only’. Things I wish I’d said and done; wondering if I’d re-paid his love and kindness or simply wished I’d made sure he knew he was loved; completely.

And at that time as that was not sufficient to make me sink lower to the ground, I had to kick myself to death with more negative thoughts. I was definitely guilty of something. Now Ben, my poor Ben had to pay with his life. The negative thoughts kept coming and going and spinning inside my tiny little head. And I let it. I should have gone to him sooner. I should have done something to give him strength to fight cancer. It should have been me. Not Ben. The world needs men like Ben. It should have been me.

Please God, I kept screaming in my head. Hopefully I’ll go numb soon. I’ll stop feeling. Then maybe it’s easier to take. I screwed up. I deserved this. There, it’s done, learn from it. Move on; it’s not meant to be; he’s in a better place.

But like me; you’ll continue to re-play the sequence of event leading to such tragedy in your mind; over and over, like a flashback in a movie.

You’ll even remember all the little details; that walk in the park when everything is picture perfect and moving in slow motion around you. You’ll even remember feeling happy; contented. You’ll smile at the memory of those stolen kisses. You feel warm at the memory of those strong pair of hands reaching out for you in the middle of the night; in the middle of sleep; little gesture that spoke volume; the break of a smile, a single drop of tears; little moments; yours.

But you will still hurt and continue to hurt for a very, very long time; before it gets better. I mean, sooner or later, the intense pain becomes a dull ache and the memory of everything including all the silly and hurtful fights and arguments that used to make you turn away will only be a distant memory; and it will feel as if it had happened to someone else instead.

And you wonder what those arguments were about; you won’t even remember. They didn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore. The once present and future had now become the past.

That was the thing about ‘reaching the point’. It made me realised that all the argument we had with one another was ultimately pointless. Like death, it silences everything. And we were suddenly left with the realisation that our disputes with the person had a built in obsolesces; like everything we do, it was for the moment; and that moment – that sliver of time we called life; count for nothing! Yet we still have the arguments, the jealousy, the things we were too proud to say, things we put off because we thought we had the time to make amends, the anguish, the resentment – until the end came and put an end to it all; and we were left with nothing but silence in our heart! Never believe that you will get over such tragedy in your life. Hearts who loved never stop loving; hearts who grief, never stop grieving. One never gets over something as significant as love. You just don’t.

But over time, you will learn to grieve silently, while life goes on for the benefits of the living around you.

People say happiness comes in many different forms; even in times of grieve; and they are right. There will always be a hand that pulls you up after you had fallen hard; a hand that will wipe your tears when you didn’t have the energy to breathe and go on living; a hand who will feed you even when you try to starve yourself to death.

There is someone out there for everyone; a woman, a man or even a child. It could be in the form of a friend or even a perfect stranger; and that person will come when you needed someone the most; like a guardian angel. Hovering around you to make sure you were safe; and you’ll learn to be thankful for what you still have and learnt to count your blessing.

One day, you’ll look back – and your heart will pull into a slight knot for a moment, before it let go and let you breathe and smile again; for that was one hell of a battle worth fighting for with every single drop of your tears; for you are who you are because of it and you’ll never want to be anyone else but who you are now.

Trust me on that – for I know. I was there.

In loving memory of Benjamin Zachary, May 1992