G— has passed away, love.

That was what I saw at 1 in the morning. My screen glimmered with the same vitality as it had when it had announced the birth of a nephew an hour ago, my cousin’s son. I stared at the message uncomprehending, detached, suspended in the ether of all existence for a moment. But just for a moment. And then the physical reality caught up with me, bound as it is in gravity and empty space that was once shared, and time that becomes agonizing in the thrum of organs that keen when tragic things happen. I felt an overwhelming grief. But it was a quiet grief, devoid of the frenzied heart-bursting pain that I had experienced only once before when my mother had passed away. Loss after that had become inevitable, unremarkable and oddly peaceful. Like I was now awake at a deeper infinite level and privy to a soul moving on to other things, embarking on new adventures in other realms, a sojourn for which i was still biding my terrestrial time.

G— was my partner’s best friend. By association and by the fact that he was larger than life wherever he went, he had become my good friend too. Every weekend we, A— and I, would bump into him somewhere as he floated around the city socializing and networking, and encouraging and supporting entrepreneurs, students and the odd soul who had fallen on difficult times. “Hello darling!” he would say to me, his ready smile lighting up his face.

G— was also a drinker and a smoker. His days had taken on a curious upside down quality where he would retire for the night at 6pm, stupefied and benumbed in the gaunt fingered clutch of alcohol and nicotine. He would be dead to the world while it heaved and glimmered in its nighttime cadence. He would then wake up at 3am, before any haplessly insomniac bird had, or any other creature that had suffered the rigors of a disrupted circadian rhythm. The sunrise and all its ephemeral promises of a better day, a gentler horizon, and the companionship of loved ones were therefore never seen or heard by him. He was already in the throes of a day a quarter spent by the time the sun and its new-dayness swept across the rest of the just-rising world. In his solitary state in fact, G— was quiet, wistful and melancholy. Unbeknownst to so many who considered him the epitome of a life fully lived, he was an unhappy man with a heart that beat to a forlorn drum. How did I know this guarded, covert state of his being? I wouldn’t have but for my partner who is intuitive and insightful in his own right. Even between them, there were things that were spoken and things that were not, and the un-uttered things had the loudest echoes, vibrating in the flesh of the heart and then settling somewhere in the left ventricle. In G—, these unsaid things beat pensive, irregular rhythms that flowed out into the world through some of the saddest eyes I have ever seen even while his face wore its sunny smile.

Over the next few days, G— circled the periphery of my thoughts constantly. I was home with my family: my father, my sisters, my niece and a bevy of aunts and cousins. And still, I found myself washed over by regular floods of sadness. G— had been a friend, a good friend, but the heartache I was experiencing seemed to go deeper. There was no time to reflect on the brimming emotion that I felt while I was surrounded by the energy and chatter of extended family.

Then I got back home to SL. Back into the routine of my life there. And I was able to finally sit with my thoughts. The fact that he had passed away just one day after I had spoken to him when A— had gone to pick him up from the hospital; the fact that he had sounded exactly like his usual self: cheerful and bright; the fact that he had only months ago begun to take an interest in the wellbeing of his body, his mind and his heart; the fact that at 48, he had died so young; and finally, the fact that A— had lost his best friend, and I, one of the purest souls that I have known, all huddled together in my head. I picked up each one gently and put it away where one safekeeps memories of loved ones. He would live on in our thoughts, mine and A—’s. Despite the grief not having fully settled, I had clinically unravelled the state of my sadness and addressed it as I thought fit. And that should have been the end of that.

And then it popped up. Like a ghost in my phone. A little message bar at the top of my screen: “Say hi to G—, it’s been a while”. I stared at the message and at G—’s smiling face. I have to admit, I felt petrified for a moment, but only for a moment, and then I let my gut speak. My wise one sits there. It was a message from beyond if you will; a little missive to say, I may be gone but I hope you haven’t forgotten me. And here’s a cheeky little hello from me. Over the next few days, again and again the message (a queer quirk of social media algorithms and I believe, a sentient universe) would skip out to the top of my screen, reminding me of unsaid final farewells. I knew then that I had to visit G—’s resting place to pay my respects, to say one last goodbye.

I also realized then that while I had neatly compartmentalized my sadness, I hadn’t sat with it until it had settled into its forever place. In my faith and culture, on birthdays and death anniversaries, one visits the graveyard to say a prayer and to scatter fragrant rose petals on the final resting place of loved ones that are gone. Even though in line with Buddhist tenets, G— should have been cremated, he wasn’t. There was a sticky little detail whereby the needful could not be done without the nuclear family being present; and as fate would have it, and in the ever mysterious meanderings of the universe, his next of kin, his daughters lived overseas. So now there was also a grave, a place where I could go and say a little prayer. There was no reason not to, and a luminescent cosmos of reasons why I should. I had to convince my partner. Paying graveyard visits was not a cultural norm for him. But we decided on a day for the visit. I got some flowers, white and yellow – the pristine for the purity of new beginnings and the sunny for the joy of new adventures.

A— wasn’t sure of the exact location of the grave so while we looked for it, I also invoked my spiritual sixth sense to somehow point us in the right direction. We found the burial spot ultimately. I gazed at the slightly despressed patch of fresh earth in front of me and then looked inside at the feelings that were washing over me now: Joy for the man G— had been, teariness for the loss of him and an odd elation for the cosmic trip that he had started out on. I laid the flowers and said a little prayer, Restful dreams, dear G—, I whispered at the end. There was a resplendent Indian laburnum tree just a few feet away swaying gently in the breeze, scattering dappled sunshine on G—‘s grave. Even as both of us stood there, holding his memories close to our hearts, I could almost see him leaning against the tree, eyes twinkling, his trademark smile on his face saying, “Thanks for the flowers darling. Take care of each other you two, and see you somewhere, sometime”.