Today is officially the anniversary of my dear best friend Munch2's (Ben Walter) death. Well, perhaps it was yesterday, December 20th since today was yesterday in Shanghai, China where he passed on. The present is already the past elsewhere. I never thought about how the day of a person's death is not a universal day in the universal moment experienced by all on this planet. For example, Martin Luther King's death date varies across the globe although the actual time is a universal moment.
I thought often as the days rolled closer to today or yesterday, what I could have done to prevent this tragic direction. Could I have been nicer to him during our college years? Could that have changed the course of our future? Our fate? Throughout this year, I kept thinking that on that particular day, munch2 would still have been alive. However as of yesterday or today, time has folded into himself... an entire year will emerge soon that starts the years where I cannot reflect on how just a mere year ago, he would have been alive.
I learned during this one year the human capactiy to float above the darkness. As humans, we always seek to find a plateau in our suffering. Like ocean waves, the water falls yet rises again in constant flow. However, I also recognize that there are some losses that define a person and this one touched the most beautiful places of my heart. As humans who have truly loved someone or something, we carry these wounds, these scars that leave us different, indifferent, tougher, softer and more sympathetic to the suffering of other that reveal a heart that can feel for others. Munch2's passing and the death of several others around this time has led me to reflect that what makes us human is universal.
Munch2 could have done so much for the world... I can only do my best to make his legacy and beauty live on elsewhere.
This year, I offered gifts from Oxfam Unwrapped in memory of my dear munch2: 12 textbooks for children and training for teachers in a poor region of the world. Hopefully the love I felt in my most profound friendship can blossom somewhere else and that his life is recycled elsewhere in the hopes of others renewed.
Much love to you, dear Brains... always.
- siming
www.jsiming.com
December 21, 2006
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