for A., in memoriam

How uncanny it is to remember, all of a sudden, a writer-friend from whom you had been estranged for years and to learn, from his own website, that he has recently died. There is something ghostly indeed in personal diaries on the web. The boundaries you used to take for granted no longer seem to exist: distance/proximity, past/present, truth/fiction, life/death.

In the same way he had done with life, he fictionalised, poeticised his own death - to the very last words. Painstakingly, obsessively. Words almost unbearable to read now, yet so spellbinding, so desperately clinging to the last remains of life.

Despite the distance, I'm overwhelmed by a sense of guilt and regret, of having been way too unforgiving and harsh in my judgement, of not having listened enough - of having so heartlessly bitten the hand that reached out to me then.

The memory of the last time we saw each other, years ago, has haunted me ever since. Not so much the unanswered calls and messages, the unread books disdainfully kept in a plastic bag, but that pathetic, shrivelled little flower I trampled on and threw away. I would rescue and hold it close forever keenly, weren't it too late now.

In a sense, it was always too late for us, even then - and you knew it.

Stubborn as you are though, I'm sure you will be waiting for me there, in that impossible place, as you once promised.


See you there, some day.


(And yes, in the meantime I shall try myself to be those words you were unable to write, because it all ended too soon.)