The art of letting go (Again)

Grief: for those who have lost before

I tell people our love was born on a hot weekday evening, at a bus stop when you shyly opened your bag and handed me a bar of Bounty chocolate, saying, “I got this for you,” while I teased you and feigned swooning, saying that no one had ever brought me Bounty chocolate on a first meeting. But that’s not completely honest; I pursued you. We had a mutual friend, and when I saw a picture of you and heard her talk about you so fondly, I decided I wanted to meet you too. You sounded wonderful, almost dreamy; I couldn’t imagine not meeting you and feeling a bit of your wonder. I convinced her to introduce us. The means are immaterial — what matters is that I met you.

We met one evening after your classes. I saw your hair first, a full high hair of tightly sprung curls, then I saw your smile. I never told you I loved your smile, the way you smiled with your whole face, not the way men would smirk and pretend it was unmanly to let themselves feel so much joy in public. You smiled like your heart was full to bursting with joy, and you wanted everyone to know it, to participate in this joy. It was an awkward first hug; one of us tried to hug, and the other extended a hand for a shake, but we decided on a hug after all. I hugged you and held on a little longer than I ought to for a first-time meeting. You let me; you always let me do whatever. I could tell that you were shy from the way you couldn’t hold my stare for long, and how you fiddled with the straps of your backpack. I fell in love with you, then. And I decided to seduce you. I used all the charms and wiles at my disposal. I made you laugh with my wit and, in the same breath, made you blush with my candor. I wanted you to like me and feel at ease with me. I wish I could recall what we talked about that day, but it’s been eight years now, and I never have been the best at remembering conversations. I only remember that it was a great first meeting, and you walked me to my hostel after.

I treasured that Bounty chocolate bar. It was never my favorite, and it still isn’t, but I never shared a bar with anyone after that day. I still think of you every time I see one. We became friends. I know you enjoyed me just as much as I enjoyed you, because I’m vain, because you never grudgingly hung out with me. You were in your final year, and I still had a few years to go, so we didn’t hang out so much, but we talked on the phone enough to make me feel like I knew you.

The last time I remember seeing you was one evening a few months later when I asked you to hang out with me. I promised you ice cream because you said no girl had ever bought you ice cream before. I wanted to be your first for something, if only that. What we had wasn't a romance, but it was wholesome and unique, all the same. There weren’t any sexual undertones to our interactions, not because I didn’t find you attractive but because I felt it would ruin what we had. There were times when we went weeks without talking, and then one day, one of us would make a move, and we'd get back into a rhythm like we’d just been waiting for someone to make that first move. Our last phone call was one of those. It had been months since we’d spoken, just brief messages exchanged. I tried to think back to see if there were signs that I’d missed, but you sounded the same, a bit tired but not any less happy than you used to be. We talked about how you were finally putting your hair to good use, what with the intricate cornrows you'd started making with them. I teased you about the facial hair you had been struggling to grow that still didn't amount to much. It was late, so we didn’t talk for long, an hour maybe, and we dropped off. The plan was to do that again in a day or weeks, whenever we felt the need to hear each other's voices in real time.

It was a cold morning when I came online and heard what had happened. Not in detail, just the bare bones of it. I hoped it was someone else who bore your name and not you. But even then, I knew. I didn’t get confirmation till much later. I tried to call so we’d laugh about it; I sent messages too; all went unreplied. So I waited with bated breath. Maybe you were sleeping or at work, or your phone had been stolen — anything was better than what I knew. As morning became afternoon and evening was close at hand, I decided to ask the first person whose post I’d come across. The three bubbles that showed she was typing blinked in and out of my screen like she was uncertain of how to answer the question. When she finally sent a message saying that indeed it was you, I felt pain like I’d never felt before. I locked myself in a toilet and cried huge, wrangling sobs. I needed to mourn alone. The people around me didn’t know you, and I didn’t need their pity. They wouldn’t understand; they’d never been touched by the wonder that was you. I struggled to hold it in because I was in public. I didn’t want them to tell me those shallow words of consolation they tell people who have lost someone: “I’m sorry,” “My condolences,” “he’s with God now,” “May God give you the fortitude to bear your loss,” and other generic sentences people say when you’ve lost someone. I hated them; I still do. So I hid there till I felt calm enough to come outside dry-eyed. No one ever said how it happened, and I didn’t have the heart to ask about it, so I scoured blogs and news websites to find out how you’d died. I saw a blog post about how you’d jumped, and not fallen, into the canal a full week before the news broke. For seven days, I had been happy and smiling and laughing, not knowing you were dead. I can only imagine how alone and dejected you must have felt to make you feel like the only escape was at the bottom of a canal.

I never let myself properly grieve; I don’t feel worthy enough to grieve for you. Every few months, I would remember and would try to bury the memory again. It could be meeting someone who bears your name or walking into a store and seeing a box of Bounty chocolates at the till before I pay. Each time was a little less painful than the first time when I was in a car on my way home and burst into blubbering tears muttering your name under my breath as I curled into myself and hugged my knees because our song came on the radio. It had gotten easier. I met your sister today; she looked so much like you, so much that it was jarring. But I didn’t have to ask if you were related. I’m not the girl I used to be, so I turned around and sprinted in the opposite direction.