I’m ready to let you go 2015

Blogging has become a by-product of free time and less of a hobby. And clearly, free time is not frivolously thrown around especially not during ice hockey season coupled with year-end work deadlines.  This hobby has become less of one and more of a dedication that I will/may resolve to upkeep... next year.  Haha, just joking!  Really, I know better than to make promises I can’t keep.

2015 has been a mixed bag. Early in the year, I’d learnt that my best friend in Junior College was battling aggressive brain tumor.  By the time the news reached my ears, cancer had altered her personality and changed her into an extreme form of her usual outspokenness.  I was warned that she was not the same generous person but had become paranoid and combative.

She was never the wall flower from day 1 when I met her and our friendship was always fiery; never a dull moment there.  So, when I heard that she had become an extreme version of herself, I mulled and dragged my feet over visiting her even if I knew that her condition would only see her through no more than 6 months.

My reasons were weak and plenty.  She was my best friend all two years at Junior College and then a couple more years after we moved on to different continents – me to Australia and she to the UK. She was that kind of friend that kept my secrets, listened to my fears and rejoiced over accomplishments over shared trips to her favorite ice cream shop. Our letters, once fast and furious, started to thin. We started growing apart from sheer distance. New lives, new friends and new excuses. 

She’d passed away on 29 October (Singapore time) and true to spirit, her hearse arrived to the catchy tune of ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’. As I said, she was not a wall flower and obviously not a stickler to social norms.  The few days leading to her death, I was distraught and my mind, scattered.  I struggled with accepting the inevitable -- never seeing her again. There was nothing I could do that could change the course of nature.  So I put my thoughts and feelings on paper in the form of a goodbye letter.  Her husband read it while she was, by this stage, restful and unconscious.  My letter made it the day before she passed on and I believed she heard every word; It was a small comfort.

Last night I dreamt of her and in my dream, she was standing beside me and I’d only noticed her presence when I looked into my bathroom mirror. She was smiling and I threw my arms around her, hugging her joyously.  All the emotions that I struggled with from the day I’d known of her condition to her very end, came back only to be awash in bitter joy.   

2015, I’m ready to let you go. You haven’t been the most kind to two devastated young girls and a heartbroken widower and several likes of us who all miss her dearly. But I will learn from you that --albeit cliché-- life is unexpected and I should not take my loved ones for granted. I am reminded that sometimes shit does happen to the best of folks. 

I'm ready for a fresh hand.