The death of a friend

Tonight a friend of mine and my family passed away.

When I was growing up and throughout my entire life, he was around as a friend of my parents. Anyone close to your parents, in time, naturally becomes a friend of yours as well, and I have quite a number of memories of him throughout varying times in my life.

Some time ago, not long, he got cancer. A couple of weeks ago, I visited him at the hospital because I wanted to see him, support him, do anything I could to make him feel a little better, if just for a short moment. But I couldn’t really pull it through. I just sat there crying, tried to collect myself, said a few words again, and again the tears welled up.

He fell asleep on and off during my visit, and I remember one of those times when I looked out his window, through the rain. Just across the street was the delivery unit, where a few years ago we had went, first for the birth of our first daughter, and then for the birth of our second. And knowing that while life was being created, becoming real, all the time just across the street, while someone else in the very room I was standing was close to his last moments in life, felt too heavy, too much of an inevitable destiny that I could bear. Again, I cried.

Tonight he passed away. At least I got to say my good-bye at that time in the hospital, in my own way.

If there’s anything he ever taught me, it was in his behavior. He was always, always, always happy and incredibly helpful to anyone. Not selfish one bit, but just aiming to make everyone else feel good.

Seeing the wonderful examples he set, and to honor him, I must change my ways, be more friendly to other people, try to understand them and where they are coming from. I sincerely have to genuinely start appreciating the wonderful gift of life.