Rest in peace, you crazy lovable cow.
I trust you will be watching over your parents, husband and hordes of children from wherever you’ll be. It’s scarcely 24 hours since you left and they already miss you terribly. Your mother is taking it particularly badly. She refused to leave your grave earlier today though she had not slept for days. She was still there when I left.
Anyway, my phone has not stopped ringing. Commiserations, condolences and assorted newshounds seeking sound-bites. I gratefully accepted the first two and turned away the last. In fact, I got a little short with a reporter at the mosque who wanted an obituary quote when my head was still spinning from watching the undertakers move your body into the hearse all wrapped in shroud. I mean, what the fuck happened to respect for the dead?
You can’t blame them I guess. The country is abuzz with news that one of her brightest has gone. You’ve been all over the front pages and someone just told me that 8TV is doing a tribute on you as we speak. But I am not going to watch it though. I am not yet ready to leave this space where I can be alone with you.
Elza messaged me on Facebook earlier to say that she is left with a big vacant hole in her heart now that you are gone. Poor thing – she’s been strong for everyone all day and is now left to fend for herself at 2am. So I told her that the hole is where your ghost will, once it has unpacked and settled in, fill up her heart and inspire her to live a fuller life than she would otherwise do. I hope I am right. If I am not, then there will be an awful lot of people walking around with unfilled holes in their hearts. Not so pretty.
By the way, I finally got around to watching Yojiro Takita’s ‘Departures’. I am not surprised that you kept badgering me to watch it. It is a very beautiful film. I suppose I could succumb to temptation and speculate upon how you loved a film about death shortly before you decided to die on us – but that would be bullshit – because the film is really about how to live. I know you loved it exactly like the way you loved ‘I Go’ – because it is about those who are staying rather than those who have gone.
I am sorry I never got round to showing you the ‘making of’ film I shot and edited for ‘Chocolate’. Unless you possessed super human powers whilst in a coma, you wouldn’t have seen the trailer of the film I put up on the 15Malaysia Facebook Page either. Anyway – it’s too late to show them to you now – so I’ll just have to go with the assumption that you approve of them. Either that, or you have my permission to call me at 3am again, as you did when you first heard ‘I Go’ and wanted to use it for ‘Talentime’.
Still, I am glad that I did get a chance to reconcile with you your decision to use the abstract ‘philosophical’ ending of ‘Chocolate’ rather than the more accessible ‘political’ ending. It took me a couple of weeks to get your point – i.e. that politics is useless without compassion – but better slow than dead, as they say…
Better slow than dead. Haw.
Lame joke aside, I do hope you’ll find time to politely ask the big guy upstairs to stop sending so many political charlatans and opportunists to this lovely country of ours. You once told me that you would cry if I were to emigrate out of frustration like so many of our best and brightest – well, now that you’ve buggered off and left us, we could do with as much help from the Almighty as possible. Tell him I’ll give up smoking if he agreed to send a few more compassionate and gutsy dreamers like you instead.
Oh well, I shouldn’t ramble on. You probably have a boat to catch or something. Please give my regards to my grandma if you see her. Tell her I am doing okay though I recently lost a friend to the ferryman…
Be safe on your way.
Miss you already,
Your Pedro.