A Year After

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” Joan Didion.

I knew I was going to lose Debjani long before I lost her but I was not prepared for what I felt when it actually did. I didn’t realize how profound death is, how permanent and how unrelenting.

There is no chance to say that one thing you really want to tell her today. No one to receive the text message saying, “Incidentally I think I see my first wrinkle”.  There is not another chance to get a glass of wine together.  No chance to ask her what color should my wedding dress be? Death is unrelenting.

You think you understand the permanency of death, but till you’ve lost someone so close to you, you don’t.

It turns out that grief can be bottomless, just when you think you’ve hit the nadir of grief, you realize you’ve just skimmed the surface. How much pain, how much anger, how much bitterness you can feel are things you don’t realize.

You don’t get that you will literally reel in shock for months. You don’t realize that you’ll program her phone number into your new phone, because you don’t expect to be the crazy person who feels that when her best friend returns, you’ll need the number again. 

You don’t think about how you’ll walk around envisioning your own death and how it could impact those you love. How many things you’ll avoid doing to prevent your loved ones from the kind of pain you now feel.  You’ll avoid getting on motorcycles even though you love bike rides. You know you’ll never go hand gliding or white water rafting.

These things may have been on your bucket list but your bucket list will change. Hand gliding will be replaced by “spend more time with the people you love, because you don’t how long they have left”. You’ll look at life through the lens of death. You’ll finally understand mortality.

I struggled with this post.  Should I have written something that told you more about my best friend or should I write about how the year after her feels. I know it may sound self-pitying but how profoundly I felt the loss of Debooh and how much I changed from it, is a testament to our friendship.  This is the best way I could convey what her death anniversary meant to me and what she meant to me.

On your birthday, with love.

I am sorry you are not here for your birthday. I think this would be the perfect for both of us to start lying about our age. I mean, really, 28 is so believable. We haven't wrinkled, we can still dance the night away, we are still pretty, 28 it would be.  So I won't tell the world how old you would be on Saturday, so that we can stick to our lie.

All day today, I have been wondering why I feel so lonely. And I just realized, I miss you. I woke up this morning feeling lonely and I thought I missed seeing my friends. I have been so busy lately. But i realize now, I just miss you. A thousand episodes of GLEE and I still feel so sad.

I want to get to a place where I can think of you, and not cry. I want to remember you with happiness and joy, but I am not there yet. I feel anger and bitterness and a sense of it all being so unfair. Mostly, I just really miss you. 

People tell me I must let go. That you would want me to let you go.  People are full of shit. If this were me, I know I would want you to mourn me. More than dying, I'd be afraid of everyone just forgetting I existed. Deep in my heart, I know that you too would not want me to let you go just yet. 

So this is my gift to you and to our friendship. I mourn you. I miss you. I love you. I haven't forgotten you. I haven't forgiven the world, for being so unfair to you. 

I know I haven't written much

but I've thought of you the whole time. Dida passed away & I missed telling you this. Ma has been in India, and I have been watching over Halfu.

I've been planning a wedding. Wish you were here to do this for me. You understand things like coordinating colors and wedding outfits and whatnot. I don't.

Can't believe you'll miss my wedding.

Steve Jobs died of cancer. He got 7 years though. Made me resentful that you didn't.

Not a day goes by when I don't wish that the cancer had struck someone else. Someone not as beloved to me.

I love you and miss you and wish you could pick out the damned colors.

Rituals

In twenty years of friendship you build a lot of rituals. Then your best friend dies and all these rituals haunt you. You see pictures of gay pride, and you know this will be the first year your friend won't comment on them. Your birthday is around the corner, and you won't have to comfort her for hers.

There is not a single day that something doesn't remind you of her. Something that doesn't make you shed a tear.

Calcutta is where we spend most of our time together. We got dressed in my room thousands of times, and I dreaded going to Calcutta without her.

I missed you Debooh. I avoided most places that had strong memories of us, but you can get away from the places but not from the sorrow. I went to see your mom and I dreaded going. I feel so gauche being alive in front of your mother.  It was good to see mashi, her sorrow made mine seem much more bearable. I wish I had more time to spend with her.

The wedding made me miss you, the last wedding I went to in Calcutta was yours. I got my hair done at June Tomkyns, and I shed a tear as I looked at the room where you had your bridal hair and make-up done. I remembered the time you and I went there for Arun's wedding, so many years ago.

When I posted the pictures this morning, I couldn't believe that you wouldn't see them or comment on them.

I miss you and mourn your loss in so many ways.

My dad isn't doing too well. I remember our conversation from when we were 18, where we agreed that if my dad was ever unwell, you would come and stay with me.

Twenty years of rituals and spoken and unspoken understandings, and everyone of them causes me to much pain. I love you and miss you and wish you were still living.

And so and so forth

Life has a way of happening to you even if you don't want it to. I was thinking of my birthday this year and how for every other year, you panicked about your birthday. Since I had a three month head start I would assure you that whatever age you were going to be, is not that bad.  When I turned 25, I assured you that 25 is really not that old, preparing you for you 25th. I figured this pattern would go on till I turned 80 one August, and told you that indeed 80 is not that different from 79.

This year, I won't be able to tell you this. I will turn a year older and won't be able to prepare you for your birthday in November. I am already dreading my birthday. The thought of it makes me tear and want to vomit at the same time. I'm dreading yours too.

I have an aunt, who stopped celebrating her birthday, after losing her brothers. Till I lost you, I didn't get understand why one would do that. Now it makes sense. When you lose someone so dear, you don't want to be reminded ever year, that this is another birthday they won't have.

Life has this dreadfully way of moving on, even if you are not ready to. I am not ready to get a year older, without assurance that you will as well.Yet I know that it will, and it makes me sad and angry and bitter.

Is it better to have loved and lost..

So I am still working on the tattoo and besides the scorpion, I want it to say something. Honestly, I wish I could call you to ask. Should I get  it to say "'Tis bettter to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all?"  Or how about "For men may come and men may go, but we go on forever?"

 Lisa wants it to say nothing at all. Ugh. I think you could have settled this debate for me.

I saw a dress a few days ago. It was perfect for you. I clicked the button on it, to buy it for you. Then I remembered. It was a tie-dye black and gold dress and I am going to India in July. It's the dress that would have been yours, had you been here. As Debolinadi says, its hard to wrap your head around the permanency of this loss, for some reason you think its a one time event, but it's not.

Rakesh is landing here today. I am looking forward to seeing him.  Did you ever think Rakesh and I would meet up in NYC without you? I certainly didn't.

I sometimes read the text message from you, where you told me that when you were delirious, you said my name a lot and cried. I like to think of us as the type of friends who would remember each other, even in states of delirium.

It is better to have loved and lost such a friendship, then never to have had it all.

I love you and I miss you. Every single day.

We miss you so much

Sometimes I'll have the best night with my friends, but when I come home I cry about you. When you died they told me, you'll always be with me. I think they meant it to be comforting. I think they haven't lost someone in this hideously untimely way. The loss of your life, is always with me. The fact that I'll never see you again, is always with me. I'll never hug you or whine to you or make a cupcake for you, these are the things that are with me. You're not.

I wish they were right. I wish you were with me. Maybe after you had kids, we'd grow apart. You know you'd get busy, I don't really like kids. Who knows what would happen? Maybe, I would like your kids, even if I don't generally like kids. These are the things I think about all the time. These things that were supposed to happen.

What would happen next time you'd come to the US with Rakesh? We certainly couldn't go drinking mid-afternoon with him around, could we? I worried about these things. How these things would change our friendship. Your kids, your husband, your new life.

Now Rakesh and I bond over our mutual heartbreak. We send emails to each other, about how difficult life is after you.

We can't believe its been three months and a week.

We miss you. 

Dear Universe

Dimma was hospitalized a few days ago. I woke up in the morning with a text message for Subho, and as usual I sort of reached out to text you. It's so strange that I still do that. It's been two months already.

I want to write a letter to the universe to please spare Dimma. I cannot take a second major loss this year. I really just cannot. I know she's old and has had a glorious life, but I can't lose her now.

I am doing as well in school as I would like to. I wish I could talk to you about this. I feel disengaged from things around me.

I miss you all the time but I don't even know what to write about. I want to write but sometimes I just am too tired of thinking about your death to write you, or about you.

I've been thinking about your tattoo a lot for some reason. I found the right place for it.

India won a cricket match, I remembered how when we were kids you used to support Pakistan. They had cuter players.

I love you.

I am shitting! I am breathing!

Two nights ago I had two margaritas and was so drunk. Remember when we could have those endless rum  and cokes and not get drunk? What happened to me?

Anyway, so I had a night full of vivid dreams.  In one of those dreams I remembered, how Baba took you and your dad to the kabiraj. A trip to the kabiraj is always amusing, in a horrifyingly embarrassing way. You sit in a room full of people and he asks you if you are pooping and consistency and color of your poop. Horrifying stuff. Apparently you didn't know the formal Bengali word for pooping, and so your dad had to translate for you. Which really could not have helped matters.

Then he prescribes you a bunch of natural pills and such.

I remember when you went, you had trouble with acne and pooping. Ha ha! In comparison my breathing troubles seemed much less embarrassing. I think you stayed on the meds for at least a few weeks. 

Anyway, I distinctly remember this phone call. You and I were talking about the terrible visit to the kabiraj but we ended the conversation saying "I am shitting!" "I am breathing", then we laughed hysterically. The embarrassment had almost been worth it.

Love you so much. Miss you all the time.

Being cool

I miss you all the time.

I was re-reading things I've written about you last night, and I remembered that summer when we realized we just couldn't be fashionably late. We were always on time. Even if we tried to be late, we'd get there before a party really started.

You and I both wore watches all the time. I think for a while you slept with yours on. I still do.

Remember the party where we tried to be cool but landed there early despite our best intentions. Then we needed to call our mothers to say we are coming home later than planned? Someone handed us a cell phone, and neither you nor I had seen one before and had no idea how to operate it. So we gave each other the 'look'. Over the years we have perfected the 'look'. It could mean different things at different times, but we always knew what it meant.

 I am not sure who invited us to this party, I think they were brothers. I remember  us thinking they were very cool. At any rate, they had cell phones and we didn't even know how to use cell phones. I bet you would remember their names. I don't.

Rohan commented on one of your pictures and said you were easily one of the coolest person he knew. I saw the comment last night. It was in the past tense.  Seeing things written about you in the past tense, makes me agitated. I also thought of the hundreds of times, we tried hard to be cool and it didn't seem to us that we were succeeding.

Clearly at some point you at least had succeeded at being cool.

Love you. Miss you. Wish you were here.

A new normal.

I had almost 20 years of you in my life. 20 years of celebrating and complaining about our live.

I remember us walking on the 23rd and Ely subway stop, and you were telling me about how you don't like treadmills. You had started "gymming" because you felt you were getting fat but you refused to get on treadmills. Or for that matter those moving walkways either. I remember you complaining so much about being fat after you had gained weight from the chemo. I told you to stand next to me, and you'd feel a lot skinnier.

I miss you every time I say I am fat.

I miss you in tiny little details.

I am taking a stats exam next week, and I remember the time I came back from seeing you in Bombay and I had a stats exam. I was sure I was going to fail. You wrote to tell me, that if I fail, you would take me to Paris. If I pass, I should take you to Paris.

I miss you in mundane things.

Your death makes no sense. I look through our pictures, re-read your letters to me, re-watch your wedding videos, look at your facebook page a thousand times to make sense of what happened.

How could this really have happened?

How could you be so alive and happy? Then so miserably sick and then dead. In two years.

People tell me, this is going to be my new normal. A regular existence without you.  A new normal. A recalibration of my emotional scales. 

I still reach out to text you something, since I know you don't pick up the phone anymore, then I stare for a while at the phone. That is my new normal. 

Everdearest

When you used to write letters to me, you addressed me as 'Everdearest Priyanka'.  I was in classes on Friday, when I remember this bio exam you took and you accidentally had the book open in your desk. After the exam, you were freaking out because cheating was considered one of Loreto House's cardinal sins. You didn't cheat, but you were afraid that someone would think so if they found out about the open biology textbook.

I sat in front of you, for every exam. During the rest of the school year, I sat next to you. Mitra came before Mukherjee. Every exam, well not Bengali, you asked me to hold my paper up so you could see what I had answered. Every exam, I dutifully held up my answer sheet for you. After every exam you told me, you didn't actually check my answer sheet.  But next exam, we'd do this again. How odd were we?

Yesterday, I dreamt about you. We were bitching about someone. It was well deserved, trust me. When it happened, I picked up my phone because I wanted to share this story, but then I put down my phone, because I just didn't think anyone would get it. In my dream, you shared my sentiment about this.

I am tired and out of it a lot. I know I should be working but it all seems so pointless.

I am not having a good week. I wanted to teach psychology of gender but am teaching pyschology of stress management. Doesn't it seem ironic that I am teaching others about stress management? It seems like a cosmic joke or at least cosmic snark. I write letters to my dead friend and I will soon lecture people on managing stress in a healthy way. At least it's not a grief and bereavement class.

I Love You

I love you.

I needed you in my life.

My life has been hard enough. You should have been spared.

I thought I have been avoiding getting drunk because I didn't want to spiral into depression.  Turns out, I just didn't want to fall apart.

Somshukla said she thought, after my childhoold, after Subho, I would be given a free pass. Turns out we were all wrong. I would still lose you. How is that fair? I had my fair share of pain, you should have been spared.

Your love was important to me. It meant more to me than you would ever know. It meant I counted amongst normal people.

I walked down Third Avenue crying today. It's too much pain. Why you? Why not someone else? Someone less important to me.

Yes, I know it's selfish but love is selfish. I need you alive. I need you in my life.

I love you. More than you know.

I am strong, but this is too much for even me. This is unfair. It's cruel. It's mean and it's spiteful.

I don't want you to stay dead. I want you to come back to life.

I don't want to let go.

I just want you back.

You belong in my life. You don't belong to the dead. You need to come back to me. You need to be my best friend. I still need one. And I don't want another one. I just want you back. I need you back. Come back to me. Please.

Tomorrow, I will wake up and this will be a bad dream. Please let it just be a bad dream.  Please just come back.

Not Manolo Blahnics

I have a pair of your shoes. I was looking at it the other day and it reminded me of the times, you inherited my shoes. I don't think I ever actually bought you any shoes, but I guess I figured if you liked one of mine, you could have it.

You wore a pair of my shoes, when you first visited Parthoda's family. They were these bamboo looking espadrilles. You came back and told me how Parthoda and his family were such perfectionists. Later when they were planning to visit you guys, you were on the phone with me giving me details on what was being fixed in the house. You really admired Parthoda's perfectionism and his meticulous planning. When he asked your sis to marry him, you were so proud of the way he did it. I have always found this very endearing, the way in which you were very proud of your family.

When I had gone to India for Arun's wedding I had these red sneakers from Aerosole and you loved them, and so they became yours. I took Tari's. So for a while we wore matching red sneakers. We had bold fashion, the two of us.

Today I had gone to the East Village for Brunch, to 7A. You and I have been to 7A before, but that's another story. Anyway this waitress was wearing a pair of shoes, that were mine and then yours. They were these high heel black leather knee high boots. You wore them in Bombay, and told me you had the hottest shoes in Bombay.  Even though your feet hurt, you loved those boots.

A few years later when you came to visit, I remember us talking about how old we have gotten. That wearing heels was such hard work and we could just not be bothered anymore. I wish that were true. I wish we were actually old. I wish I was an eighty year old blogging about the death of my best friend. I don't know which is worse, the numbness I sometimes feel, or the overwhelming sadness, or the unbearable panic. Sometimes I think I am over the worst, and then in a day I know I probably have barely scratched the surface of the worst.

I remember now...

His name was Aziz. Pretty sure you dated for about two months.

So apparently I was wrong, I didn't throw out our letters. Ma found them and got some for me. I spent part of the day reading them.

Do you remember when we used to go to computer lessons together, after ICSE. It was so bloody hot and I never had anything to wear. They were trying to teach us MS DOS. What a colossal waste of time. After a while we just stopped going and started hanging out.

That was the summer we met Jojo and Rudro. We also hung out a fair bit with Bhai. On the way to Radhika's house, I fell off the bus and scraped my knee and my new white jeans. I think you mocked me endlessly about that. Not all of us can be graceful, some of us are clumsy. Bah!

I remember that we were chatting with this gorgeous guy, in St. Xaviers campus that summer. He was really good looking. I think he was interested in you, but not you in him. I have this memory of us sitting on the bleachers talking to this guy about his insecurities and ego. For a gorgeous guy, he sure did have issues.

That same summer, or was it a summer later,  I ran out in a towel in the middle of shampooing my hair. I remember you and a group of other people were there.  I had just been chased out of the bathroom by a cockroach. You looked very calmly at me and said "I think cockroaches are cute".  There's a pic of the two of us in towels, a few years after this incident. I don't remember that day at all.

I hate that there are gaps in my memory. I was reading the letters and had forgotten some of the names in them. I wanted to call you to ask you about them. Your number is on of the few numbers I know. It's strange to think that I will never dial it again. In a year or so,  I'll probably forget the number.

We got too little time together and even in this little time, I can't remember it all. The memories are all I really have left of our friendship and even then, there are gaps. 

Sleep & Such

I have had a good couple of days. Not really sure why. But every time I try to sleep I get terrible anxiety. Also my left eye has been twitching constantly. It's very strange.

 I kept having these strange thoughts about you. I have totally forgotten the name of your first boyfriend. Azad? Something like that. I briefly thought of writing to Robita, Payal and Radhika and asking if they remembered. Why do I need to remember this? In the grand scheme of our lives, he really didn't count. So why is it that I am obsessing at 1.00 AM about his name?

I have been thinking about that time in Pune when you took me to your school, on your bike. At some point I shut my eyes, because I was convinced a bus was going to run us down. When we were out of that mess, I told you, "Debooh, I was sure we were going to die". You very calmly looked at me and said, "Yeah, so did I". And I replied "OH MY GOD, THAT DOES NOT HELP REASSURE ME AT ALL". And then we laughed.

After we got to you school, I got off your bike and tore my pale blue linen pants in the process. Then for the rest of the day, we had to travel with a bag covering my torn pants. Fun times.

I remember how we joked that the waiters always gave me the bill. We were not sure why this happened, but we could always predict it. Or how you laughed at me when I used chopsticks at the Thai restaurant in Pune.

I miss you all the time. I have missed you  so much oft and on for the last two years. I didn't think after this year, I would really be even to tell the difference when you passed away. I thought I had become used to missing you. I was wrong. I can tell the difference.

As my best friend you should know that had it not been for Lisa, Gargi and Somshukla, I am not sure how I would have made it through this time. I wish I were able to call you and tell you this.

Magical Thinking

I have been having strange thoughts about your aesthetics. How you wore these black rubber bangles for a year or two. How for a while you wore eyeliner on your top lid only, then switched to the bottom lid. Rarely both.  My style was flashy, yours was strikingly simple. With a strong emphasis on striking.

I remembered how you mocked the gold lipgloss that I got from MAC during Arun's wedding. You said "priyanka, only you would buy something like this". Later you took that MAC lipgloss from me. Ha!

I remember our matching burgundy pants that we wore constantly. Like the Osho's. We were deeply attached to those pajama like pants.

I remember us smoking our first cigarette together and you promising me that you wouldn't smoke anymore. Then the following summer I came back, and you were smoking regularly. Yet even in that, you were so moderate and controlled. No more than 5 a day. Whereas I would do a pack or nothing. We were different in those ways. You could do the middle ground, a lot better than I could.

Did you know you were going to die? I have often wondered this. 

I knew. 

I now say it was because the statistics on stage 4 breast cancer, in young women is pretty dismal but really its because of magical thinking. The type of thinking that goes like this, bad things happen to me and people I love. Around me, the shittiest possible outcome, is the most likely outcome. I sometimes wonder if you were someone else's best friend, would you have made it through? If I were not in your life, would your chances of survival be magically higher?

I know that this is illogical and likely untrue. Knowing and feeling are not the same.

You sent me a text message in July, asking me to let the other girls know that you loved them. Did you mean for me to do this in July, while you were perfectly capable of texting them, or after you were gone? I am not sure. 

Thank You

It's been a whole month today. One month, without you. It's been a shitty fucking month.

This month, I found out that you are a whole lot more sentimental then you let on. You had cards and letters from when we were 18. I threw mine away eons ago. I hate clutter. I also expected you to last as long as me, so I didn't see the point in holding on to them. I found the True Love perfume box last night and smiled about it.

I started reading some of the letters I wrote to you, but honestly got bored. Thank-you for reading through that crap. No one really thanks friends, for the times we bore them to tears. Yet they still stick around. Thank-you for reading that meaningless drivel and still sticking on in my life.

There are other things I want to thank you about, like the way in which you trusted me. We had this strange conversation once, where I told you about this friend of mine, who didn't trust me around her partner. I remember you calling that girl, "a true idiot". For moments like that, small little thing that mean so much, I thank you.

I want to thank-you for all the times you listened to my dad's insane rambling about religion. And for never bringing it up again. Never embarrassing me about it.

I thank you for being in my life. For knowing when to give me a ear, and when to tell me to get a grip. If you were around now, would you ask me to get a grip?

The last words you said to me were, I love you. Thank you for that.

Thank you for upgrading me to best friend status, in 8th grade, in a True Confessions book.

If I had to do it all over again, knowing what I know, knowing how much pain  you would end up causing me, I'd still pick you. I hope you'd pick me too.

It's Concealer, Not Magic

I have written in a few days but I think about you all the time. Sometimes I can't organize my thoughts enough to write, but I remember little things about you all day.

On Saturday; Maya, Gargi and I went to visit Debolina-di. It was lovely and strange at the same time. Debolinadi made some delicious appetizers and it was good to spend some time talking to her.  It was strange because you were not there. I got your squishy pillow but haven't taken it out of the bag yet. I tried to wear your white earrings, but I just couldn't do it.

Gargi was supposed to make banana bread yesterday. Do you remember the time, I was drunk and making banana bread and forgot to put the baking powder in it? Consequently it didn't rise? The banana bread reminded me of you.

I was putting on some concealer and I remembered the time Debolinadi got you concealer and you tried to apply it to almost all of your face. Finally Debolinadi told you that it was concealer, not magic. You had acne then, I was amazed at how you worked on getting perfect skin for your wedding.

I woke up on Saturday and  remembered how you wore men's cologne when you were younger, but more recently all your perfumes were ultra-girly. What a strange thought to wake up to.

I know that people grieve differently. I am bitter and angry about losing you. I wish I could see this in a more positive way, other people can. They can appreciate that you had the best care, a good husband, a loving family and that you got a last good month. I want to be those people. They love you too but they don't seem so mad with the world.

 I worry that my friends will run out of patience with me. I worry one day, I won't remember you all the time.

Will I have really lost you then? 

Of Fairies and Angels

Today, I was remembering when you danced at Saturday Club to Pari Who Mein. You were so graceful and watching you dance was watching a transformation. Seeing a regular person transformed into a work of art. The grace in your moves was stunning. You made it seem so easy, like all great dancers do.

When I came to see you in October, I remember how graceful your hands still were. I remember feeling clumsy. I felt overcome with clumsiness, like a cow stumbling along, saying the wrong things and doing the wrong things. Being wrong. I think it had something to do with knowing you were going and not knowing what to do with it.

It all felt so wrong and clumsy and ugly.

I remember you telling your mother, that the cancer will take your legs. I couldn't believe it. The legs of such a graceful person. How could life be so unfair?

I feel like a bumbling food now. Somehow I feel like I have lost all my grace too. I am cognitively clumsy. I was never physically as graceful as you. I have always had cognitive grace though. I can't concentrate. My memory is shot and my attention span is nil.

Today I was chopping onions while remembering you dance, and I started bawling. And I know why. I am seeing your sister tomorrow. Tomorrow will confirm that it happened. You are no longer here and no matter how many letters I write to you. It's over.

You have no idea how painful that is.

I love you.