Epitaph for A Person I Loved - Published in The European, Feb 2015

150,000 people die every day, but last year one struck me. 1 million people die every week, but last year there was one that hit me. For every other person who died that day, other people had felt like I had. Sucker-punched, winded, wounded, empty. Imagining their loved ones last moments, those last seconds before death, their last thoughts, the faint sooty transition of a candle flame burning out. I had never felt such a longing desire to touch her skin and to remember her familiar smell- a mix of stale cigarettes and the perfume she had worn since we were teenagers. I wanted to hold her in my arms, like we did as children, or punch her, as we did as adults. I wanted to feel her breath on my skin, her husky voice narrating her mischievous tales. I remembered her as an 8 year old in Tartan Uniforms, her angelic blonde hair down to her waist, coming over after school to destroy me on Goldeneye on N64. I knew all her stories. All those little parts of her that made up her overriding narrative.

But this isn’t an epitaph.

For as much as I could write about her, no words could do her justice. No description could describe her rich complexity. No one person around her had the full picture anyway. No one ever really does. We each see another through our own eyes, through our own biases, through our own world models. Those close to us are mixed with us in some way. We blend little parts of our intellect, our personalities, our hopes, dreams and fears. Sometimes this happens with an individual very quickly and sometimes it never happens at all. I find both routes to be beautiful. And yet I had loved my friend for 16 years.

But this isn’t an epitaph.

150,000 people die every day, but today no one I knew. 1 million die every week, but this week no one I knew. No revelations of cancer, no revelations of Alzheimers, no revelations of accidents. Not today. But I had woken up that day last year as any normal day. Not expecting news. Not expecting change. Not expecting loss. I had smiled on that morning, as my friend smiled her last smile, unknown to me. I had continue to breathe that day, as my friend took her last breath, unknown to me. You would think we would find it less shocking considering our ignorance. Oh she died?! Well, I had no idea what was going on in her body anyway. Her cells lay unregulated, her biological system unsupervised, within a healthcare system misaligned to her personal interest for survival. Oh she died? It’s not very shocking at all, considering the circumstances, considering the current state of affairs. If I had cared for her I would have measured every biomarker, every metric, furthered every science to understand her fully. Oh she died? We shouldn’t be so shocked. We know nothing about our loved ones. For every day they live in unknown health conditions, we should be glad of their survival. But for each of those days, we should condemn ourselves for our pathetic inaction to protect. It's our job to accelerate science.

But this isn’t an epitaph.

150,000 people die every day, but tomorrow, most likely no one I know. 1 million people will die this week, but most likely, no one I know. I may have spoken to them once, I may have passed them in the street. I may have watched them with their children. And yet for each one of those individuals, those grandmothers and sons and sisters and cousins, they will forever remain nameless to me. And yet I feel I played a part in their deaths. I have contributed to a global mindset. A collective endorsement. An agreement that this is ok. I feel a responsibility in the death of my friend.

But this isn’t an epitaph.

150, 000 people die every day, but today, most likely it won’t be someone you love. 1 million people will die this week, but most likely, it won’t include someone you love. We have no idea of course, so don’t take that as a guarantee. We have no idea when that time will come. And when it does, we will act shocked, surprised even. We will shout out in our nightmares, how could you!!, not knowing that the exclamation has always only ever been directed at ourselves. And in that moment we would trade everything, everything we had ever purchased, every stupid item we had so fallibly cherished, every dollar spent on all the nonsensical bric-a-brac we surround ourselves with, to just bring them back. Every damn thing. And if we are lucky enough to live longer than most then we will go through this process numerous times. Yet we never rewire our thinking. We carry on distracting ourselves to mask the pain. Rational creatures would invest this money into biomedical research, wishing that nobody would ever have the same experience. We would want to know how to prevent these catastrophes, these diseases, these illnesses, the aging and degeneration that plague us all. We would learn from our mistakes.

And yet we don’t.

150,000 people die every day, but last year one struck me. 1 million people die every week, but last year there was one that hit me. And I dream of her every day. I dream of her potential, the children she never had, the jobs she never accepted. I dream of the diary entries she never wrote, of all the stories I will never get to hear about. I would trade everything I own, every holiday I could ever take, every annual bonus, every bit of social recognition I could possible aspire to, to bring her back. But I can’t. I don’t have the option. She died because scientific progress could not match her needs when the time came. She died because we live in a world where we prioritize bullshit over the advancement of research. She died because we collectively agree that this is ok.

This isn’t an epitaph. This is a fight.