Ifs

A friend passed away this morning. I was writing about how did I know
him, things that we have helped each other, things that we've been
through together, the oppinions he offered on the guys I was dumping or
trying to date, girls who have crushes on him. He is such a good friend
that if he'd ask me to go and help him stuck in the middle of the
Federal Highway at 3:00 a.m., I'd go (in fact, I did).
Then I thought of that one incident that strain the friendship,
suddenly, I stopped writing.
Yeah we made up after that one incident, but it has deterred the
friendship. It has brought me and him way apart from each other, where
else we used to send each other jokes via SMSes.
He recently called trying to see me and passing me his wedding
invitation card (yup, he passed away then days before the big day).
Having the weekends filled up with family obligation, I nicely talked to
him about mailing the cards. Doesn't a groom got lots to think and do
that he should let Pos Malaysia does things for him? Then he warmly
insisted of seeing me and the rest of the gang, after all, we have not
been seeing each other for so long, albeit the busy busy days he is
facing. I somehow managed to make him pass the card thru another
friend. Received that yesterday.
My phone rang again on the way to work, it was his number, the
bride-to-be called me crying which from I got the whole story. He
stayed alone, in the new condominium he bought himself. Last night, he
went back to the mom's, then showed up un-expectedly at the fiancee's
place without calling. He said he just feel like spending the night
over, and who thought that was the final night of his life. At 1 a.m.,
he had this chest pain, they took him to the hospital and he was
pronounced dead. At the point of this blog is written, he is undergoing
a post mortem.
Then there I was, driving thru Federal Highway to work with tears in my
cheek, feeling so bad of not abiding his final wish to me as a friend,
i.e. just to see me. How could I have NOT noticed?
I then resumed the final task as a friend, calling anyone that I could
remember, cutting the story short (it was not really nice for the rest
of the world to know that he spent the final night at his fiancee's, our
culture doesn't allow man and woman without marriage be together in the
same house, no matter how tragically romantic I think it is).
I can't help but feeling miserably sad. If only that I have spent one
hour of my full two weekend-days to see him, if only I could have put
the thing that strained our friendship away, if... if.... Yes, life is
full of ifs. I thought I am the one who lives my life trying each new
adventure, afraid to wake up one day saying "If only I...". The fact is,
in the pursuit of all the new adventures, I have tend to make my anger
overrules a simple friendship who has nurtured