The friends we have, the friends we’ve left
By Kalimullah Hassan (Sunday Times)

June 19
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WHO is a friend? There are so many things that we expect a friend to be — loyal, devoted, trustworthy, dependable, to be there in times of trouble, in times of ease, in times of sorrow, in times of joy…

Is this what real friends are meant to be?

Through the passage of life, we meet many people. Most, sadly, come into our lives and leave as quickly. Alas, there are but few, who enter, leave a footprint in our hearts and remain forever.

Through history, philosophers and poets have defined friends in so many ways.

A friend is someone who is there when others walk out.

A friend is one who knows all about you, and still likes you.

A friend is one who believes in you when you have ceased to believe in yourself.

A friend is one who knows more about you than yourself and still loves you.

A friend’s hand is always there ...you just have to reach out for it.

A friend is like a wall. Sometimes you lean on the wall, and sometimes, it is just enough to know it’s there.

We expect all that of friends, but how many friends do we really have?

The kind who do not walk in and out but who remain constant, and are there whenever you need them.

Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca once said what many of us believe to be true: "My father used to say that when you die, if you’ve got five real friends, you’ve had a great life."

Wise words. Because there are many who claim to be friends and many whom we call friends.

But if you can list the qualities most important to you in a friend, you will find, like Iacocca’s father said, that you would be lucky if you could count five real friends.

I guess I am luckier than many. I have more than five friends for whom I hope I can be as good a buddy as they have been to me.

My wife and our four children; Vincent, Brendan, Nor, Kian Onn, David, Kian Tick, Mervin, Verghese, Kelvin, Hock Lai, Joseph, Kamal, Jack…

Aah, Jack. A good man. I cannot remember how we met.

It was so many years ago, in the mid to late 1980s when Jack was a fast-rising young diplomat in the Singapore High Commission in Kuala Lumpur.

He was the counsellor, the number two guy, and quite unlike the image of the Singaporean we had in our minds. A chain smoker, fun loving, witty, funny, affable…

At first, we met on the diplomatic cocktail circuit where journalists, politicians and diplomats fed off each other’s rumours or merely enjoyed each other’s company.

We had common friends. Verghese, who used to work with Jack, Mervin and Musa Scully, the veteran journalists, and old Renee, the publican who served the best ox-tail soup in Jalan Gasing.

It is hard to remember who got along with whom first. The only memories are that we were together, almost always.

As we became friends, I found that Jack was not a happy man. His marriage was not all what he wanted it to be and over time, it was the children that kept the family together.

Amidst working in an atmosphere where there were constant hiccups in relations between Malaysia and Singapore, Jack and his wife tried to keep their relationship working.

And somewhere, sometime, he met Fatimah, an artist of great talent, and a senior officer in the Ministry of Education.

It is said that we come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly. And that is how it happened.

Jack was not perfect. Who is? But between them, Fatimah and Jack found the kind of love that spanned the rocky Strait of Johor.

And despite all the perils, it was a pleasure for friends to see them together, arguing and pouting at times, but always looking at each other with an affection that warmed the heart.

Jack and his wife eventually divorced, and Fatimah and he married.

Jack found that his marriage to a senior officer in the Malaysian Government was frowned upon by touchy Singapore officialdom and Fatimah, likewise, found that she had to now work in less sensitive jobs because she had married a Singapore diplomat.

Eventually, refusing to live under a cloud of suspicion, both quit their jobs and decided, like storybook children, to live out their lives on the beach.

With whatever money they had, they opened a little resort in Pekan and have for the last decade happily lived by the sea.

We kept in touch, less regularly as time went by, but occasionally, we would all get e-mail from Jack who was still his old playful self.

We saw him occasionally. Jack always had a problem with premature greying but now he was completely grey and had a ponytail. He looked cool.

Fatimah was her gracious self, never seeming to age.

They had an apartment in Highland Towers. One morning, they decided to spend the weekend in Genting Highlands with the children.

An hour after they left, the building collapsed. They were the lucky ones.

When I lost my job in 1988 and suddenly became unemployable, Jack was among the few friends like Mervin, Lai, Suhaini, Assif and Verghese who stood by me and gave me the shoulder to lean on, the support to carry on, the confidence to continue believing in myself.

When I started my business, Jack was among the few who would call up from wherever he was to give encouragement and wish me well.

We shared stock market tips and lost money. We’d scold each other and then laugh about our dreams to get rich quick.

The last I heard from Jack was when I joined the New Straits Times last year. We exchanged a series of emails and I promised for the umpteenth year that I would visit him at his resort.

Mervin and the rest made the same promises. None of us went.

Three weeks ago, Verghese called to say that Jack had passed away. For a moment, I was angry because Verghese, like Jack and Mervin, would often make jokes like that and later laugh at our reaction.

But this time, it was not a joke.

The saddest part was that none of us knew how to get in touch with Fatimah.

This week, Fatimah sent us an e-mail. It read:

Dear All,

I am writing to you because Jack regarded you as good friends. Jack passed away on 20th May: It was quite a peaceful death (he was unconscious at the time) after his battle with 4th stage lung cancer.

Any anecdotes or fond memories that you’d like to share with his two children or myself will be greatly appreciated; our treasury of thoughts and moments with and of him always has room for more.

Fatimah

We never knew he had cancer. Jack never told us. It was so in character with him. Much as we remind ourselves all the time that we should not leave the loving till tomorrow, we did just that.

Jack was in his early 50s and we all thought we would always find time to see each other, one day…

How do we know we have a true friend?

We always knew Jack was a true friend but how good a friend he was only hit us when we found it so difficult to accept that we would never see him again.

Jack was that friend who was there when others walked out. He knew all about us and still liked us just as we knew all about him and still liked him.

Jack believed in me when others ceased to do so. He was the wall we could lean on, and his hand was there for us to reach out to.

It was just enough to know he was there. It’s just that we got too caught up with living life in the fast lane that we kept less in touch. But we all knew Jack, like we to each other, would always be there.

That is how I will remember Jack, Fatimah.

He was a good friend. For that, we are less complete now because from the few friends that we will ever have, one good friend has gone.

It is our regret that we saved our speeches for Jack until he was no more.

We always thought we’d look back on our tears and laugh, but we never thought we’d look back on our laughter and cry. — (Anon)

P/S: I'm posting this article as it reminds me of someone. Reading this, my heart aches yet knowing I'm still remember her and miss her so much. She had passed away but yet her place in my heart still remain intact. May Allah bless your spirit. (Allahyarhamah Nur Faizah Idris (passed away five months, three days ago!)