Excessum

How is one supposed to feel when one is painfully aware that these are the final moments with, and final glimpses of, the people seated in front of you; that they may, in your lifetime, never be seen again? What is one supposed to say? What expression is one to give when the gripping realisation that with every passing second is a second closer to a finality and a conclusion. What emotion is one to carry trying to cherish these very moments yet see them run through one's fingers?

What was I to say? Or feel? I do not know...

What does it feel like to be a present absence ...? Perhaps I know the answer to that. Yes, to you who mentioned. The night could have been more 'beautiful' and 'meaningful'. But it wasn't. And it can never be. It could have ... You are quite right.

The days are slipping past; the good things (too) never last.
It would be naive to think they would. It would be ... unreal.

A wise friend and fellow colleague once told me that students, as much as we hope (perhaps in vain) to be untrue, can't really be friends. They move on regardless of how close they once were to you. And we are but a part of their universe. They, reversedly, are so much a larger universe to us. I comprehended the wisdom but I understood it only today. No matter how close, they will move on and chart their own destinies; and rightly so. I've witnessed it with the first batch; I'm witnessing it again. And I know I'll bear witness to this truth in a future nearer than expectation can compose. But it must be so; it's how it is and should be so. And so we move on - the closest of us, the best of us.

Excessum: departure, digression, death ...
To the Romans, it was all explained with one word. And it takes that one word for human beings to realise what can be lost and what has been lost. It takes that one word so imbibed with the power of degeneration, decay, neglect, mortality, finality, ... regret ... and waste ... to spur humans to cherish what they have, had and may never have again. But what happened to all the time in between? What happened to the opportunities that could have been but were never? What happened to the moments that could have happened? Complacency ... the conceited belief that there would always be tomorrow; that the things and people we believe we love will always be there with the rising sun.

And so we grieve, lament, and weep - not for the loss of the person but for those lost moments that would never return, and never did happen. We wish for one moment, just one moment more but this 'never', and 'never will be,' are sealed by eternity. Human beings ... such lost souls of conflicting contradictions.

Dear God, if you exist as I thought you did in my younger days, and are listening, as I naively believed in the years before maturity, I'd just like to say my task is done. I've accomplished what I told myself, and you by incidence, I would. What's been given in return is beyond measure but it will now turn to sorrow which I must bear ... for a while at least. Yet it is now my time to move on. It is now time to let go ... even of the good things and memories. This chapter is done and perhaps, along with it, the characters that have been instrumental in the drama of my life. It has been so with past chapters; perhaps it will be so again.

Goodbye.

Yes. I hope I find what I'm looking for as well...