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Vajiha - the light

By Bangin - Own work, CC BY 2.5*

Missing home can come in many different ways. It can be the skipped heartbeat when you hear a familiar sound but realize later that it was actually something else or the ringing ears that follow when you remember someone you lost eight years ago but just a year and a half before you left home and its as if time stopped. The memories become a time capsule. It still feels like it was a year and a half ago but then you count the years and it has actually been eight. It seems like yesterday when you were laughing, texting and making plans with them, all to be suspended, it seems, not in the air, some alternative space perhaps, forever.

Watching an episode of Frasier today with the husband, just winding down from the day, the character's obsession with the sudden death of another character became my undoing. Things that he said, the particulars of the situation were so similar, that everything just reminded me of you, Vajiha. I tried to suppress the thoughts, tried to move on, kept watching the show, but eventually couldn't keep up as memories came flooding back. The moment where I was when I found out, the feeling of the ground disappearing from under my feet, the abyss, the daze that I walked into our friend's room and she oh-so-matter-of-factly told me that it was true, that you weren't going to be there if I made it to our meeting scheduled to be in less than an hour.

I remembered, how, instead of getting on to the bus to meet the publisher you were setting me up with for printing Nishat-e-Sania, we got a taxi cab and rode over to your house in Rawalpindi. Six of us, stuffed into the taxi but not even noticing it. I remember your funeral. I remember as they took you away. I remember the pure white, the rose petals, the rose water sprayed everywhere. 

But most of all I remember and am reminded of the promise I made you. I will never let the light vanquish that you lit in my heart. The love that you shared, selflessly, with everyone, making every person around you feel the most special, was prophetic. 

I want to tell you something though, we never published Nishat-e-Sania. Not under my editorship at least. Something just died in me. It was never the same again. I heard someone did publish it after I left, I didn't keep up with the updates. I visited the campus once after it was all over. It was too painful. I want to go back but also know how it will be, better in memories than reality. Memories alight with love, care, wonder at the vast, beautiful universe surrounding us, concern for the fellow human being. So many trips down the memory lane that I open those gates, I will be inundated such that I won't be able to breathe in my reality. I have lived my life to the fullest possible in every moment. No regrets. It doesn't always seem that way especially when I feel useless just like I used to when you were around and would pull me out of my funks. Now I am my own savior. Perhaps in your memory. When I start counting and reliving even a timeline version of events, I am surprised at how everything has fit into a few meager years. 

Life is a blessing. One that I plan on continue to enjoy because we never know when it might end. That's one thing I have learned from your departure. But, Vajiha, my sister, know that you had a big part in teaching me how to live mine. You inspired me then, you inspire me now, and I am sure, continue to inspire me, you shall.

*https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1445070
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