We lost an old friend recently.

We hadn’t seen Adrian in many years, and truthfully we were no longer in contact. But still it was an immense shock when I heard last Saturday that he had passed, that he had been in the hospital for months, that he’d needed surgery.

I was in Makati by myself, having dinner before heading home, when I got the news. I stopped eating and started crying, and I couldn’t stop. I got a ride home, and in the Grab I cried intermittently, and again when I got home.

We got news of the wake the next day, and we went to the funeral home on Monday.

I did not expect to cry uncontrollable tears when I was talking to Adrian’s daughter. I did not expect the heaving sobs nor the weight in my heart. I did not expect this death to hurt so much.

A years-old hurt

Truthfully, it had been fourteen years since I’d had any significant contact with Adrian, and that last conversation hurt as much then as it does now to remember. He’d been through a bad breakup, and I’d tried to reach out, tried to speak with him. He’d brushed me off so curtly and coldly. I was stunned, and when I got home I could only burst into tears.

I hadn’t thought about that encounter in many years, until I heard about his passing. Only when I could not stop crying did I realize how much it had hurt then, how much it still hurt now.

I’d heard about how Adrian had been sick, and that there had been an attempt to raise funds for his hospital bill. I looked up his sister’s posts on Facebook, and saw his photos. I would not have recognized him: his face was sunken, his eyes dull, his arm black.

All I could do was cry again. All I could think was how we’d wasted 14 years not speaking to one another. All I could do was wish we’d been there for him. I kept thinking, we could have visited him in the hospital. We could have helped raise funds. We could have brought food. So many could’ve-beens.

All I could feel was regret, over the 14 years of missed friendship, and the fact that we had lost the chance to fix it.

Geeking and gaming

I don’t even know if I could say we were close. But we saw each other frequently, back then, because of various geek things.

Adrian was an Star Trek fan, and I remember reading his blog for reviews of the original series episodes. I found pictures of us with the other Trek fans at the premiere of the JJ Abrams movie in 2009.

He was part of a gaming group called AEGIS, and they held monthly events called open gaming meets, which anybody could join to play card games, board games or role-playing games. He was quite a well-regarded storyteller, and many gamers would thank him for running their first RPG.

He and our other friends came to our house regularly to play, watch movies, hang out, eat and drink.

Some friends and I used to run a website called New Worlds. We were all part of the New Worlds Alliance, a conglomerate of geek groups that put together science and fantasy conventions. You can’t run events and work with dozens of passionate people without running into some conflict now and then, and so I remember there was some issue or another that we were all beside ourselves over. There were angry emails and petulant exchanges, and I was greatly annoyed. I had to write something, a statement perhaps? I remember showing it to Adrian, who chuckled and said, as he handed my notebook back to me, “You were angry when you wrote this, weren’t you?”

He tried to run an RPG for me, Oneal, Dante and I forget who else. He was trying to turn our characters into SHIELD agents, except we kept screwing with his attempts and honestly we were a bunch of misfits. I remember I was just trying to kill everyone else, and Adrian would sit at our dining table, exasperated, which the rest of us doubled over in hysteria. Eventually he’d join in the laughter anyway, while desperately trying to bring us back to the story.

I don’t think I could say we were close. But I can say we were friends.

Stories and strangers

It was in 2010 when he stopped talking to us.

In 2015, Oneal and I went to a small event where people could try out different RPGs, with different game masters who’d prepared stories and characters for newbies. We joined different groups, and I got to play D&D.

Oneal joined another group, which turned out to have Adrian in it. Oneal told me later, a few of the other players remembered Adrian being their first Dungeon Master (DM).

After the games, everyone got together for some sort of closing remarks, and I saw Adrian sitting a few chairs away from me. I think his daughter was with him, and I remember thinking I was glad they were spending time together.

That was the last time I saw him.

The next time I saw him was in St Peter Chapel.

As I try to consider my sorrow and regret, I can’t help but think of other people I once considered friends, even family, and how various circumstances have led to the end of those relationships. I think about why and how I’ve stopped speaking to them, if I’m ready to reconnect with them. I wonder how much I’ve changed since I stopped calling them friends. I wonder if the behaviors that caused those friendships to end have changed at all.

If they died tomorrow, would I feel this much sorrow and pain? Would I be crying this much? If I died tomorrow, would they care?

Adrian was cremated a few days ago, and today we went to Loyola Memorial for the burial of his ashes. His daughter spoke about how much she loved him, about how he taught her to love stories, about how he was in his truest form now, because he would live on as a story, and that was how we would keep him with us.

I suppose, in the end, that’s all we are, stories in which we played a part, stories to be told over drinks and laughter, with tears or joy or sorrow, stories that may inspire or impress or infuriate. Perhaps, instead of dwelling on the 14 years of missed stories, I can think of the ones I recounted above. I can only hope that in the 14 years that we weren’t speaking, he once or twice remembered a story I was in, and laughed rather than scowled. I suppose that’s all we can really hope for.

Goodbye, Adrian. You have all the time to tell all your stories now. Rest in peace.