I’d Forgive Sooner

We waste so many good days being angry over bad moments. And we act as though we have forever.

One day, you realise that winning an argument has never added a single day to your life. Pride has taken so many away.

I had a friend.

We were close until, at some point, we drifted apart. Now I cannot even remember why. Back then, the reason must have seemed important enough for us to stop calling each other.

When she died, I was in shock. I had not even known she was ill.

I see her most clearly in her flat, over coffee. A cigarette between her fingers, left unlit for ages because she was talking. She would always begin the same way:

“I won’t go on. I’ll keep it short.”

She never kept it short.

She would talk, circle back, add one more detail without which the story apparently made no sense. Then she would look at me and ask:

“Are you following me?”

I was. Her story, the cigarette still unlit between her fingers, all her detours on the way to the point.

I did not know that this would be what I remembered most clearly.

I do not remember why we drifted apart. I remember her voice. I remember that question.

“Are you following me?”

And sometimes I think I was not.

Not when it mattered.

The things we are angry about often disappear from memory within a few years. People can disappear while we are still holding on to our pride, waiting for them to call first.

Do not wait until someone is gone to realise the argument did not matter. You will not remember most of them anyway.

But one day, I would give anything for one more coffee in her flat, one more unlit cigarette between her fingers, and a story that, of course, will not take long.

I’d forgive sooner.

While there is still someone to forgive.

This is where I keep the things I don’t want to forget ”Something Stays”

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This post was previously published on medium.com.