Never Too Soon

 

© jeboalacarte

I suddenly thought of you. I’ve been thinking of you more often than usual in the last year than in the last thirty-five years of my life. 

Four times. If I am to count exactly how many times, it’s four times. But that is already a lot of times considering that the last time we comfortably talked to each other was in 1999. Today, I missed you really bad and I cried as I reflected on why that was so. 

Bibo, you are my only regret. See, I still call you with the name your ten-year-old self has introduced to me.

I cried, oceans away, when I heard the news. Had it been seven years?

You were, and still are, my favourite seatmate. 

It was in you that I felt the sincerest friendship of my childhood years. I don’t remember anymore how or when that friendship thawed. Did the teacher move your seat? Was it after you had a horrible asthma attack and were absent for a couple of days? I just know that we went from drawing our dream houses and making up unintelligible lyrics for the Powerpuff Girls’ theme to just nodding at each other’s direction when we meet. Fifth grade ended with me feeling as alone as I was during the first day I transferred to our section; and in sixth grade, even though we still chat from time to time about Pokemon, I no longer called you Bibo. You had become Jibari.

I never had the chance to tell you but I used to draw my dream house like you would do yours even ten years later. I also still remember the first few stanzas of your revised Powerpuff Girl’s song.

Maybe the reason why I recall you fondly is because emotions linger even when memory fails. You made me feel welcome in the middle of all the hostility. And that even when the hostility grew larger than what our tiny bodies could swallow, you tried your hardest to hold your ground. I knew you tried your best to hold on to the power of our short-lived friendship. But you were a child. As was I. And at that age, all we ever wanted was to be accepted.

You started as my friend and then faded in the background as an acquaintance. Despite the years, I have never considered you a stranger. Bib, even though you’ve grown to become Jebo—and I eventually became Bam—I know beneath our grown-up identities, we were still those naive kids who fawned over the largest Jolina butterfly clip ever behind the glass cabinet at that store where your parents would pick you and your sister up. 

It was awkward when we met again in college after four long years. We have grown into young adults our childhood selves would have never imagined to be. You got tall and burly; and I could no longer see in you the curly-haired, lanky, and sickly kid I knew back then. I admit, I still harboured negative feelings toward anything and anyone that reminded me of fifth and sixth grade. And I think you felt that too. I’m sorry I didn’t have the will to tell you that you weren’t part of it. That you are actually one of the few good memories I had of those years.

I’d like to believe that we tried. I'd like to think there were attempts to reconnect. We'd quietly acknowledge each other with a weak smile every time our paths would cross. Our mutual friends in university knew we were friends and so I know that you had spoken fondly of me as well. My memory is hazy but a part of me would like to believe we spoke in the halls of Dotterweich and you apologized for the faults that weren’t yours to begin with.

Had I known that you would be gone way too soon, I would have tried my hardest to bring it back to how it was. 

I’m so sorry, Bibo. I’m so, so sorry. I wish I tried harder. I wish I held on stronger to the memories of our friendship.

I wrote something when you left seven years ago. I felt that I did not have the right to tell the world about it back then. Everyone who knew you mourned you. You were sorely, achingly missed. I was so surprised it took days for it to sink in but I cannot grieve you like how they did. After all, Bam and Jebo aren’t friends.

But this is Bai Shaima, your old friend, talking. And today, Bibo, I feel your absence strongly. I miss you, seatmate. I hope you’re happy and peaceful wherever you are right now.