I suddenly felt a wave of sadness over the death of my best friend, and I miss him more than I can explain. It's been over five years but I'm mourning as though I just heard the horrible news from his sister. I can still remember calling him that awful day, and Nadia picking up and telling me that he was missing. I remember thinking that it was a stupid joke and it wasn't even funny, until I realized she was crying. The feeling I got that day was something I had never felt before. It was this feeling of dreadful disbelief that settled over my chest as I struggled to process what she was saying. Hours after our phone call, the truth floated over me in a haze, and I felt like I was hovering over a black hole, trying to breathe and about to drown, the way he drowned when the ocean cruelly stole him from this world, from all of us.
But the feeling I got three days later, when Nadia called me and told me his body had been found was the worst of all, because before then I had been holding my breath, hanging on to the faintest hope that he was somehow alive somewhere. That hope was snuffed out like someone put a hand over the dimmest candle fire, and there was no more hope, only the terrible truth. That was the day I came to learn true loss. I can't describe the pain of losing my best friend. But I can feel it right now, a sense of heartbreaking despair and utter hopelessness because I desperately want to speak to him right now, but he's gone somewhere beyond my reach, to a place where I can never speak to him again.
I try not to remember that I'll never hear his voice again, making fun of me, consoling me, listening to me the way only a best friend can listen. I've never had a best friend since I lost Mahin, and I don't think I ever will again. If friends could be soulmates, he was mine.
This is the first time I've ever shared memories of him. But I think of him every time I go to a beach and remember what his mother said. "There's something there that takes people away." There are times when I wonder what his last thoughts were before he disappeared beneath the waves. I wonder if he knew how much he was loved. I can only find peace in knowing that he's in a peaceful place now. He's gone home.
