Adavuruku,
“The
day before.”
It is November so I always
think of you. It has been eleven years since you slipped into the glory. It comes
to me in this sudden feeling of loss. Like the saintly writer you introduced me
too, on that bus to Kubwa, says: when you lose a friend you not only lose them
but the part of you that was only them. I am bleeding parts in November.
It is funny because you were
the most difficult of friends but I can’t even remember that. There is a vague
sense of clashes and things that don’t matter anymore. In the end the things
that matter remain in memory and all the heated things pass into nothingness. All
I remember now is the day before. The things still left hanging, plans of world
domination, the sense of a group that did not choke or stifle but enlightened
me in leaps and bounds to be more like an individual without the fake freedom
of being selfish.
What else can I say? This door
you slipped into has informed all my writing since. You were an excellent poet
and I think if you put your hand to prose I might have needed to find a job in
editing. There was a way your life folded into literature and you understood how
the ephemeral and the practical could shake hands, become friends and build
something worth the true foundation of all things. It may seem like I am making
a point of making you bigger than you were but that is the point. Death removes
the unimportant. I now only remember you as the day before.
I do not measure the loss. I
measure the life. I measure the effect it had on my life. I do not remember the
imperfection. There is no sullied hand or fallen heart anymore. All that
remains of you now is all that you could have been.
And are right now.
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