If only...

I couldn’t recognize her at first. It took me a few moments to realize that it was her. Her face looked pale and there were traces of aging all over her beautiful face. She looked ten years older than her actual age. She was the one who was blessed with good looks and beauty. She was a beautiful person inside out. She had always been popular back in our hay days. Everyone loved her and yearned for her company.  Though only a lucky few got the pleasure of her company. And I was the chosen one.  It was a sort of miracle that she chose me to be her friend since we were complete opposites. While I was an introvert, she was an extrovert. While I was the geek of the class, she was the heart of the class. While I used to shy away from parties, she was the life of a party. While I had a few friends, she made friends easily.  In short, we were poles apart yet there was some unknown force that bonded us together and made our friendship stronger by the day. Eventually, we grew to be inseparable and became the paradigm of friendship. Some envied our friendship and some wished to have a friendship like ours. It was a friendship which was meant to be forever.

Then we got married. And apparently things changed. The equation of our friendship changed.  We, who were inseparable then, hardly talked to each other now. Not that we didn’t want to but we were both submerged in our respective lives and our priorities kept varying from being a good wife, daughter-in-law and eventually a mother. And amidst all of these, our friendship became the last priority. Gradually, we stopped talking to each other altogether and the great bond that we shared once upon a time started fading. I often did think about her but never got to actually talking to her thinking that she might have forgotten about me after all this while. Something prevented me from calling her first. My ego. If she remembered me or cared about me then she could have also called me at least once in all this time. But she never did. Neither did I. And we drifted apart from each other. Years passed without seeing or contacting each other yet I couldn’t get her out of my mind completely. I made many friends along the years but subconsciously I would always compare them with her and the friendship we had shared. No one could match up to her and the connection we had shared. So, although I had many friends, I felt alone. I yearned to have her back in my life however my self-esteem held me back always. Our egos had taken precedence to our friendship.

Today, when I saw her after almost twenty long years, I still couldn’t believe it we were face to face. I had almost lost the hope that we will see each other in this lifetime. But here we were. I just kept looking at her and letting my eyes and mind sink in the reality that she was there right in front of me. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her all these years and how I have never stopped caring for her and remembering her. I wanted to shake her and ask why she never tried to get in touch with me.  I wanted the time to go back in time and mend the dent on our friendship. I wanted life to give us a second chance at friendship. I wanted us to catch up on each others lives and happenings which we had lost track of. I wanted to reminisce and laugh about our days together, with her. I wanted us to start afresh and make new memories. I wanted to hug her tight and say sorry. But I was engulfed in turmoil of emotions and all I could do was cry. Inconsolably. Because the fact is, try as I might, I won’t be able to do what I wanted. It was too late already. She was gone. Without bidding an adieu. I stared at her still lifeless body and cursed myself for never calling to ask her how she was doing. She was suffering and fighting her battle against blood cancer since last five years before finally succumbing to the illness yesterday. As soon as I came to know about her demise, I knew I had to see her one last time. To bid my final goodbye to her. It didn’t matter now that she never called me or tried to get in touch with me. Maybe she didn’t care as much as I did. Maybe she didn’t value our friendship as much as I did. Maybe she didn’t miss me as much as I missed her. But none of that mattered now; the only thing mattered right now was that, that I wasn’t there for her when she needed me the most. I would never be able to forgive myself for that. If only I hadn’t let the ego in me rule my mind and listened to my heart.  If only..

Just then a hand came over my shoulder jolting me out of my chain of thoughts. I turned around to see who it was. It was her mom. I hugged her and we both wept till our eyes dried out. It was only later, when we were seated at her moms place after completing all the rites and rituals of cremation, that we could talk about her. I wanted to know everything that I had missed all these years. She had led a very hard life. Life had thrown many challenges in front of her and she accepted them all without any complaints. She had gone through a bad marriage, a divorce, raising her child single-handedly and battling cancer all in this span of twenty years. And finally the truth that I waited so long to hear was in front of me. She didn’t want to saddle me with her life problems and unnecessarily stress me with her worries. She knew through a common acquaintance of ours that I was leading a happy and comfortable life with my family and didn’t want to disrupt my peace and bliss by thrusting upon her qualms and worries onto me. She knew that I would have came running back to her and put everything on hold, if I even had the slightest inkling that she needs me, at the risk of neglecting my own family. And that’s the reason she never contacted me even though when she had missed and needed me the most. I didn’t know whether to get annoyed with her for not sharing her woes with me or with myself for never trying once to know how she was doing. All I knew for sure now was that I failed miserably in the test of friendship. If only life could give me one more chance to rectify my mistakes. If only. And I sat there whole night weeping my heart out and agonizing over one of the biggest loss of my life.