I wanted to see how Deniz was doing, the way Facebook quickly allows that. Type in a name, *poof*. But instead, Facebook showed “Remembering Deniz Üzüm”.

It was early in the office and the message was abrupt, the way you remove bandage from a wound. Messages of love and goodbye on his profile were over a year old, and I was shocked. Deniz had left this world, and nobody had told me.

That Facebook search three years ago, and I’ve thought about Deniz every month. We had met at the station of Zwolle a year before — and looking back it, it must have been just before he died. It was only five minutes but it felt familiar, a friendship that doesn’t wither. I had always been the loose end in tightly-knit packs of students, as my high school consisted of going up-and-down levels (mostly down) & sideways through classes — and people like Deniz made me belong. But I understand that nobody had thought about telling me, how could they? Deniz linked me with the people he knew, not the other way around. School is now long-gone and everyone has spread across the country, the world even, friendships reduced to a random Facebook search.

But the feeling of it is still there. And every month I feel Deniz’s pain which he never knew was coming, that of missing out on life. Three years on, this grief doesn’t dissipate — it only grows. Every day or joy that passes is one I have had and he didn’t, while I wish he did. For this, there’s no closure.