may i be forgiven

i was responsible for giving tazkirah after zuhur to the p4 & p5 girls last friday. after cracking my brains, i decided to give a talk on the importance of forgiveness... how Allaah would not forgive us for wronging a person until we have seeked forgiveness from the wronged person. some of the girls shared how they sometimes feel it hard to forgive and forget even for little mistakes or how sometimes they forget to apologise to someone after doing something wrong & asked whether Allaah would still forgive them now... the honesty in children always puts me to shame

all that talk made me think about someone i haven't thought about for quite awhile...

when i was 15, i had a friend... yan... yan was a great friend and an amazing human being... yan was funny and generous and patient and had a way of listening to you when you were talking that made you feel as if there was nothing more important in the world than the words coming out of your mouth... yan had a wicked sense of humour, though, and also had the knack for pushing your buttons... yan liked to tease you just to watch you jump around with smoke coming out of your ears...

i remember i had a bad temper back then... well, i suppose i still do but not as bad as i did then... i remember i could get quite verbally abusive if riled up enough. one day, in october that year yan got on my nerves... for the life of me i can't remember exactly what happened but i do remember a guitar being smashed & someone being called some nasty things... we were at the void deck of yan's block... we used to hang out there alot... i remember leaving the place in a huff & yan saying "dude, you didn't have to smash my damn guitar la! bloody hell!"

yan LOVED that guitar.

we didn't talk for a few days & i was starting to feel really guilty about what happened... it was partly my fault after all... but i couldn't bring myself to make the first move to apologise... we didn't go to the same school or live in the same neighbourhood so there was no way of us bumping into one another but i really did want to call and say i was sorry & even considered chipping in for a new guitar... but in the back of my mind, i kept thinking yan should make the first move to apologise because he did start the whole thing...

i never did call

two weeks later i got a call from yan's brother, ayim... yan had bought a stuffed toy... a garfield... yan meant to give it to me because yan knew i loved cats... yan also knew i wasn't that into garfield though, but that i would never have rejected a gift from anyone... yan's wicked sense of humour...

when i asked ayim why yan didn't call me personally he went silent... he said, "ain i'm sorry we forgot to tell you, we were so busy it just slipped our minds... yan passed away two days ago in a motorcycle accident"

i've never really gotten over yan... not completely... what made it all the more difficult to is the fact that i never got to say i was sorry for what i did...