“I’m so tired of this. I mean, what the hell do you think I am? What am I to you?”

I was so angry. So tired and frustrated and hurt. I couldn’t remember feeling so hurt by him in years. I didn’t care that we had an audience – two of his friends – watching. Usually, I would’ve kept everything to myself. He wouldn’t even have had an inkling of how I felt. I never show my heart to people at the time they hurt me. I always keep it to myself.

But this night was different. It was the final straw. I had enough of being placed second. No, not even second. Always last. The night was supposed to have been a night of change. I was so excited for him. I knew that he had no idea what he was going to be in for, but I also knew that he would be a changed man. I loved him so much. All I wanted for him was to find that peace and love in his heart for himself. I knew he needed it.

Things, however, didn’t turn out that way at all. I was supposed to pick him up at his house. When I got there on time, he wasn’t there. I was talking to his mother who didn’t know of our arrangement and she informed me that he had left with his friends. While talking to her, I got a message on my phone from him. Sorry babes, I’m not going to be able to make it tonight. Love you.

I phoned his cell phone and his friend picked up. He had forgotten the phone there and was on his way to pick it up.

“Keep him there, I need to talk to him,” I told his friend. ‘Bastard,’ I thought. ‘Coward. Why couldn’t you just called me instead of sending a message? Too scared to talk to me but not hesitating to let me down.’

I drove there in my car, fuming. In the nine years of knowing him, I’ve lost count of him breaking my heart by doing similar things. His friends were always first… and while I was also a friend, I never seemed to fit into that category. He wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to let me down and I was sick of it. It would be the last time he was going to do that to me.

When I saw him, I let loose. We were first alone and I let him off easy. I turned to go to my car when I realized that I was doing what I always do. I was allowing him to walk over me. ‘It stops here,’ I decided as I turned back and took him on again - this time in front of his friends.

“I’m not going to let you treat me like this anymore.”

“You know how I get with these things,” he said softly in a shrugs. “I wasn’t ready.”

“Kelvin, I was at your house talking to you mother when you sent that message to me! You had an entire week to cancel and you waited to the last possible moment. You didn’t even call. You’d rather be a coward and send a message.”

“A coward,” he began to argue, but I didn’t give him a chance. I wasn’t interested in listening anymore. I didn’t care what he wanted to say. He was in the wrong and we both knew it.

“I’m not doing this again. I’ve had it. Go enjoy your evening with your friends,” I added with a sneer, turned my back on him and left. His car passed me as I walked to my car. I refused to look at him.

Little did I know that it would be the last time I ever see or speak to him again.

A year passed with a few occasions here and there where my mother would see him at the store or somewhere. He was doing well, she told me. He had said that I should call him. I never did. I had removed his number from my phone a week after our argument. My mother had his number, she reminded me of the fact every now and then, but my pride didn’t allow it. There was no way that I was going to crawl back to him. He probably felt the same. I had embarrassed him in front of his friends, had I not? The very friends that meant more to him than I did. We were both very stubborn, prideful people.

Part of me expected there to come some kind of situation where we would reunite. We had argued so many times and it had never been enough to split a friendship completely. Life always seemed to find a way to reconcile us. But part of me also felt maybe it was the last of the last. God had once told me to split with Kelvin. (I wrote about it in a previous chapter). Maybe it was now that I had to let go and let him slip by. My friendship with him always had some points that brought me into conflict. We were so different. He was part of a world I could never be part of.

My heart lurched slightly when I noticed a ‘for sale’ sign in front of their house. Later it was replaced with a ‘sold’ and I had accepted that he didn’t live there anymore.

Yet, I had never stopped loving him. I missed him terribly, but allowed him to fade into the background as I have done with many others. It took months – such things always does – but I finally managed to be able to think on him without hurt, anger, sadness or regret. We had our own lives to live. Lives that, through both our choices, never crossed paths.

The news of his death came with a shock. At first I didn’t believe it. Especially since my father was its unlikely herald. Someone had sent him a text message knowing that I knew Kelvin.

I figure that you know about Kelvin Thomas’ death. Tragic.

But we hadn’t known about it. After asking for more details we heard half the tale. Him driving home from some kind of gathering, appearing to have fallen asleep in front of the wheel, landed head to head with a truck. Dead instantly.

I didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. ‘God no… no…’ I had to know for myself. I couldn’t go to his family and I didn’t know whether I would’ve had the strength to do so. So I went to the only other place I could think of: A mini-mall complex where some of his friends worked. But they weren’t there. I saw a shop that I felt I should try at. The owner was parent to twin girls who were with us at primary school. They were close friends to Kelvin and had always been kind towards me.

By miracle the twins happened to be there. One immediately approached me as she caught sight of me and asked whether I knew about Kelvin. My heart wrenched and came to a standstill. I nodded and let the tears drop when I finally acknowledged what I had heard.

I told her that I had spoken to him in a year… and I voiced my fear… a fear that she could only sadly confirm. None of us had any peace about where he was going. None of his friends – believing or not – had any thought that he had made right with God. No one could confirm anything.

I went to his funeral with mixed feelings. It was hard for one, sitting in a church I had left several years ago. In a great number of my culture, it is expected that you become a member of this church. I remember Kelvin – who had become a member while I did not – telling me not long after being made a member that he didn’t really know whether to believe in God or not. It was difficult to sit in the church with his closed coffin in front, knowing that while he may have been a member on paper, he was never a member in his heart. It was probably years since he himself had been within the building.

My mother sat beside me. It didn’t take very long for us to start bawling. She had loved him like a son. I don’t think any of my friends were ever as dearly loved by my mother as he was. He had managed to capture her heart completely – a feat few manage to do.

I listened to the preacher comparing Kelvin to a tapestry. It was such a good analogy for Kelvin. He was so light and sparkly, so lively and open and craving of the attention of those around him. He had such bright colours to him… yet so many darker ones in the depths known only by those near to him. I sat that day watching grown men cry over him. At twenty-one he had made such an impact on all who knew him – faults and all.

His eldest brother broke down over his coffin, yet his father didn’t shed a tear – one of the few who didn’t. We put a rose on his coffin… touching the wood that held the fragments of his empty shell and walked outside. I went to hug his mother, as did my own. Kelvin’s mother told her how mine had always been a mom to him. I was glad she had said so. My mother needed to know how much Kelvin loved her.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him. There are too many memories, too many places we had gone together in this city. As I walked through the college campus I see his shade sitting on the brick wall. As I drive I see others in their cars carrying the same lazy posture he had while driving. As I go home, I drive by his old house. It’s hard to escape the memory of him.

I look back at everything. At the tears spent longing that he would look at me with more than what he did. At the tears spent at his funeral longing just to have him hug me again. I miss him terribly. My heart is filled with regrets and questions and sorrows. I know I will see him again when we stand together before the judgement throne of God. But how will that end?

One can never say never. There’s no telling what happened that day, or that moment. Was there a time where he called out to God? One call would’ve done it. I believe it. But did he? I wish I could say yes. I can’t.

I could never deny this: That I had learned so much from him about being a good friend. That there had been moments when I was at my weakest where I shared things to him that he didn’t judge me on when everyone else would’ve judged me. A time when he was one of the few that stood by me as over twenty ‘friends’ turned their back on me and rejected me. He had taught me acceptance. He had taught me so many things.

It’s funny. I was able to accept him not being near me when he was still alive yet I cannot bear the thought of him dead. There were days where he never crossed my mind yet now I cannot stop thinking about him. There’s not a day that passes where he doesn’t fill my mind – if but for a moment.

He will always be my brother… One of the few people who has really seen the depth of me. I miss him terribly.