Dear KB,
Just visited you this morning, a day ahead of your anniversary tomorrow. Mandai was quite a scene today, with a lot more people than I have experienced in the past. It was bustling, and did not have the usual serene mood. Maybe it’s some festival today, or mother’s day and people have come to pay their respects. Most were busy chatting and some were busy carrying loads of stuff and organizing logistics. Guess the living may not have much time to grief in the face of logistical challenges left behind by the dead 🙂 (I am sure you appreciate my dry humour on this).
Although it has been more than 10 years, I have to say that the day I received YL’s call from the US informing me about your accident is still very vivid in my mind. I remember dismissing the email you wrote to us before you left for that fateful trip asking us to help take care of YL if anything were to happen to you. ‘Get your arse back here and we meeting up then’, I remember replying to you. Since then I have visited you regularly during your birthdays and anniversaries, with a very heavy heart but not knowing what to feel honestly. I have not been able to put down my thoughts or share them honestly. However, today, seeing your picture amidst all the fanfare that was going on around me, somehow, I was able to say it aloud in my mind without hesitation and I wanted to pen it down before this gets away from me.
I’ve told some close people to me that you were a better friend to me than me to you. That is simplifying what I really feel. You were always there when I needed someone to talk to or bounce off ideas. You never hesitated to involve me in your life, be it asking me to join your new startup company during the dot.com boom, or taking me on a thrill ride across the 2nd Link on your Honda Pan European. YL told me you have always enjoyed talking to me. I did too, although I have always felt I was never your intellectual equal, and all I could provide was a listening ear and try to understand and value add, as calmly and logically as I can. I guess that has always been my value, which is lost in a world where the loudest voice wins. 🙂 However, life gets to all of us, and I look back and I know pretty darn well, I did not take as much an effort with you as you with me.
I guess what I am trying to say is I have been really too sorry or ashamed to admit my failings as a friend to you. I’ve always known that, but I guess I have come to terms with it.
You’re missed, my friend. Not just on 2 days of every year.
Living In And Around Happy Street 