Fifteen years and two weeks ago, I lost my father, he died peacefully in his sleep after a long illness. At the time, it was a blessed relief for him so, being an adult with my own family to be busy with, I coped well, or so I thought, and got on with life. It took me about three years to contextualise his passing away and for a while, I was depressed because I felt I had an unfinished business with him but then, who doesn’t? My father was no angel, he had his faults, God did he have his faults! However, he had his many positive points too; I can write a book about his good and bad points. As a matter of fact I did but, it is not for public consumption. Anyway, 15 years on, I still miss him.

On 19th June Sixty years ago when I was a child, I lost my infant brother Osama through a tragic accident. My recollection of him as an infant is very vague now however, the circumstances of his death are extremely vivid in my mind. I can play in my mind, with alarming detail, the few days between his accident and the announcement of his death. I also remember the days, weeks, and months after that, where we, as a family, came painfully to terms with his loss. Over the years, we naturally got on with our lives and had numerous reasons to be happy. Nevertheless, I personally feel the pain of his loss to this day and feel deprived of his presence in my life.

Recently, I visited his grave with one of my brothers and we found it was barely marked, without a proper headstone. We immediately commissioned a renovation with new markings and a headstone with his name, date of birth, and date of death. Osama was less than a year old when he died and sixty years on, I still miss him.

When I was a university student, I made a few close friends some of whom I still keep in touch with to this day. Two in particular I lost contact with and even with the power of the Internet, I have tried to find them without success. Every now and again, I come up with a new way of looking for them, try and fail to find them. I miss John and Razmik a lot.

You can see where this is going now, right? I only gave a few examples here and there are many others but, you get my point.

Anyone who knows me at all will tell you I am not gregarious and have a tendency to avoid most people. However, those few I care about I tend to consider them as precious jewels so, when I lose one, I find it impossible to get over their loss.

So, here we are; I really suck at losing people I care about.