Memory:

Sometimes death is a monster ravaging and destroying everything in it's path.

Sometimes death is agony and torment, long, drawn out and painful.

Sometimes you can death looming in the distance, steadily approaching, the bravest man's nightmare.

And sometimes death is a quiet phone call in the middle of the night.

She was a small, thin girl. Small but certainly not shy. She had a loud voice that rang out clearly and a definite opinion on the matters of the world. She was calm and liked to take things as they came. We were frenzied and harried, we ran about at the speedy pace the world demanded from us. We were afraid of being left behind if we weren't fast enough. She was calm though, the eye in the midst of the storm that swept us off our feet while she remained in the center, serenely unaffected.

I was a rowdy teenager fresh after my first experience in a co - ed school. I bullied people mercilessly, was the bane of existence of all teachers, a repeat offender when it came to delaying homework submissions, the student who spent more time standing outside class than in. I preferred to call myself an outstanding student.

I had my little gang during the bus ride back home, my trio of friends who I spent time with. I noticed her but rarely spoke to her. She was small, with a stooping stature, her too thin frame made her an oddity. I seldom saw her with other people, she spent most of her time by herself. On the rare occasions that we spoke I was rude, tremendously rude and scarcely repentant about my attitude. When I couldn't be bothered to speak, I ignored her outright. It barely affected the way she treated me however. She greeted me the same as always, tentatively reaching out to me in friendship, wishing me Merry Christmas before winter vacation as if nothing ever happened.

Then things slowly started changing. From being the little kids who sat in the front of the bus we became the seniors. We were thrilled, lords of the coveted back seat, free to bully an terrorize the little ones as we pleased. There were five of us altogether, two girls from my year, her and another girl from Grade 7. The four of us sat together, squeezed into the same seat uncomfortably while she sat by herself in the backseat. She wasn't cool enough for the cool kids and so I decided that she wasn't cool enough for me either. I made no effort to include her in the conversation or speak to her as one of us. I had grown older but I had not grown up.

Still she was the same, always smiling, always cheerful, never resentful. I naively wondered if she was one of those people who never knew hatred, who found it impossible to take revenge, the kind of people to whom loving and forgiving came naturally without a second thought. Naive because I now know that loving and forgiving is difficult even for the best of us.

We graduated together and we spoke once on the phone afterwards. She had called me to tell me that she had got a pretty good percentage in her board exams. And I was truly happy for her, the pangs of conscience had started pricking me way too late and I was glad that good things were happening for her.

Over the years we had encounters, far and few in between, we stopped by to catch some moments here and there. Moments that I rarely gave any thought to other than the occasional pricking of my conscience for the way I had treated her in high school.

I met her a week ago while I was rushing home after mass. I gave her a quick casual hi and hurried away as usual. If I knew that it would be last time I would ever see her, I would have stopped a little longer, would have told her that she was a wonderful human being for never resenting me after all that I had done. I would have told her all the things that my ego never allowed me to tell her before, the things my brain tricked me into believing were issues so old that she would have forgotten them by now.

They say that time and tide wait for no man.

You made this sad, ugly world a little more beautiful to live in. And now that you've gone it's all the more drab and lonely for it.

I hope the wind is in your hair and the sand is at your feet. I hope you are running free as you always wanted to, in green pastures looking up at the endless sky that stretches up above you. I hope that you are lighting up heaven just like you lit up the darkness on earth.

And for now this wretched earthling bids you farewell.

Until we meet again.