It’s Saturday. I am one week older. One week wiser. Hmm… 🤔 does it really work like that?

Anyway, it’s Saturday. I need to meditate and reflect on what’s happening. I had a little too much socialisation this week. I need some quiet time.

One of my closest friend lost her mother this week. We saw it coming but didn’t expect it to happen so soon. She was diagnosed with cancer last year in October. At first we thought it’s going to end right then. But she fought. She healed. She went back to work. She got sick again. She healed again. Hospital had been her second home since the diagnosis. She never stopped fighting. She almost never lost morale. Her last words were, “मैं ठीक हो जाउँगी” (I will recover). She passed away this week. She was the strongest women I know. I have known her for a decade. I admired her.

I want to talk about the pain we feel when we lose people who are close to us or when someone who is close to us loses someone close to them. I am in both of these situations here. I am very close to this friend. I am so sorry to see that she has to go through all this at such a young age. And I am so sorry for her mother. She had to leave behind the two people she loved the most – her husband and her daughter.

It’s a tough week. It’s been a tough year for my friend and her father. It’s going to be tough them for a long time.

They had a real loss. We had a temporary loss. It’s not even a loss, in fact, it’s just a feeling. We, the friends and relatives, will get over this feeling of loss that we are having now but they will live with it. They will make real changes to their life to adjust to this new situation.

I broke down last year when she was diagnosed, but there’s nothing much I could do. I broke down again when I found out that she is no more, but there’s again nothing much I can do. I want to be there for my friend but I can’t do almost anything because I live so far away. I am not available for most of the time and things.

We use what’s available. Sometimes we wait for the things we want but the waiting period has its limits. If we don’t get what we want, we go with what’s available. I was sad when my friend told me what happened. I wanted to talk to someone about it. I have friends in India who knew about the situation and how I was associated with it. But when it came to talking to someone, I called my friends in this city (I was out of the country at the time). My friends in India might have probably understood my pain much better and might stay for longer with me in my life, but they were not available at that time. (It was too late in the night and they were sleeping so I didn’t call them.) I couldn’t call them, and I couldn’t have seen them to talk about it in person, so I made use of what’s available. Infact, I still haven’t talked to them about this because all I can do it talk over the phone, and I didn’t feel like doing it because I could talk to my friends here in person.

Distance is a big problem in any type of a relation. We hang out with local friends than the ones who live in another city or country because the locals are available all the time. We don’t have to plan our gatherings with them. It just happens. I wanted to talk to my local friends because they were available. We are in the same time zone. I could call them at that hour. We live closeby. I came back home and went to meet them to talk about it.

This happens all the time. Recently, I made some new friends. I made space for them in my life because the old ones were not available most of the time. I enjoyed their company a lot. I was very close to them, but they were not available, so I had to look somewhere else. It happened at work as well. Someone who should have been there to help me was was not available so I started to look somewhere else. And this is how it goes in romantic relationships as well. We need people. We need them close to us. If they don’t satisfy our needs, we look somewhere else.

I would have liked to be there for my friend but I can’t do almost anything due to many reasons. I could go for a few weeks but that doesn’t cut it. She would need much more support to start a new life. She better use what’s available.