While you rest... I am restless

First it was Raj. It was the last Wednesday. The feeling was as surreal as they come. Okay I haven't seen him since I was a kid and since I was always left out of most of the games being the youngest. Like when we played hide and seek and dark room, I kept waiting and waiting inside wardrobes and cabinets for someone to come and find me. Nobody did and they went on to the next round without even remembering about me. And when it was time to split, the kids were rounded up by the parents to go home and then I would be found sleeping in a cupboard still hiding.

Raj was much older but then we all grew up.

Then it was S. That was last Saturday. Again unreal, surreal. He lived close by, came home sometimes especially when the old group met up. He and husband go back a long way.

Both young men died in car accidents. Separately.

Now smiling faces haunt me. Times lived and unlived disturb me. There is a thin line between the past and the present. Between what was and what could be. There are stories being shared... bonds being rediscovered. There are promises to meet and plans to follow up. There is a coming together of friends, kept busy by life's vagaries. And then someone said... "We must catch up more often. We were so close... now why does it take a tragedy to get us together?"

Why indeed...