What his Death Taught Me

Sometimes I wonder how different life would have been if he was still alive.

Not that his thought crosses my mind all the time. However, I would be lying if I share that it doesn't hit at all.

Before you continue reading with the assumption that I am a depressed woman stuck in my past relationship, let me clarify that I am a happily married woman. But again, there are days as quiet and solemn as tonight that I miss him. It is such a paradox that his death feels both fresh and distant at the same time.

I miss how ambitious he was. He had hung up our last phone call just saying how busy he was at the moment that he had to meet one of his clients and would call me later, which he never got time later. Just like most of our 25-year-old Nepali (wo)man , he was buried under the societal expectations of how a son should be; how a boyfriend should be; how an elder brother should be; how much he had to earn; how busy he had to be.

I miss how gullible he was. He was so naïve that he didn’t realize that life was too short to fulfill his dreams. Rather than pressurizing himself on all those mundane tasks, I wish he had recorded a few more songs that he loved doing the most. But he was so gullible that he thought he could do all of them in his 50s after his retirement.

I miss how honest he was. Every evening he used to return home all disappointed with his clients for not understanding him. He knew deep inside it wasn’t his clients but his hatred towards his job. He was an engineer, interestingly, a career, again so many Nepali run after. But he was doing it just for the sake of doing it as what he wanted to be was a singer. We used to have long conversations about how hopeless he was with life yet optimistic at the same time.

I miss how anxious he was. There wasn’t a day when he wasn’t anxious. He was anxious about the targets he had to meet. He was anxious about how his younger brother would become. He was anxious about his parents’ health. He was anxious about what my parents would think of him. He was anxious about his looks though all of his friends found him smart and handsome. He was anxious if he had any career in singing.

Amid all these, what I miss most about him are his songs that he had recorded, uploaded on YouTube but then deleted later because of his low self-esteem. Even after half a decade after his tragedy on a brutal road accident, I sometimes type his name and try to search for his songs on YouTube.
I miss him not just because he was someone I loved so dearly but also with the thought that he had a unique and soothing voice and would have shined forever if he had known how to cherish those little moments that he had with his guitar.

Though he left all of us so early, what he has left us with is a teaching on how not to live a life. In times of crisis and despair, I keep on reminding myself that life is too short to worry about the things you might never achieve. The beauty is living in the present moment and enjoying the little things and little joyful moments with your loved ones.

His death has taught me not to sleepwalk through life even when it's mundane, even when its tragic, even when things are not going in the way I want. Most importantly, what his death has taught me is life goes on and it will find its way even after days and months of darkness, immobility, agony, grief, panic attacks once in a while. He wasn't supposed to die but it happened. It was definitely not in my control. What's in my control is breathing in and breathing out; feeling my breath; noticing that I am alive to fall in love, to dream, to laugh; and to be thankful.

Nothing but gratitude!