May 29, 2024

#116 Aih

Remembering Aih.

Issue #116 Aih

29th May 2024

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This morning, I woke up to the news that my friend Aih had died.

I’ve just sat for a full minute looking at that last sentence and willing it to make sense.

But it doesn’t.

I knew she had been sick. REALLY sick. But if we ever talked about that, it was in the past tense.

Like a battle won.

She was very special to me.

We met online at an improv audition during the pandemic. She lived seven hours in my future, in the Philippines.

I think I’m having to admit to myself now that I knew very little about her life.

I mean, clearly …

But that doesn’t make sense either because she was my friend and I felt a real connection to her.

Improvising does that. Allows you to cross vast distances in a heartbeat.

You build worlds out of thin air and the only way to keep them from winking out of existence is to commit to them hard.

And you can only do that by committing to each other.

We went on to be in the same improv team for most of lockdown.

Aih was unfettered joy and creation.

I logged on to Facebook for the first time this year, just to read the comments under the announcement. And everyone was in agreement.

Reading them, I realised they weren’t the platitudes we so often use when someone dies. They were specific.

(improv is all about specifics)

She brought light.
She radiated warmth.

That was absolutely the sensation I experienced when I was with Aih, even through the glass of my computer monitor.

(perhaps I should check my brightness settings haha I made a joke)

The last text she sent me reads “Yes please let’s zoom! When is good for you! 🙂”.

And then I didn’t reply for a month.

And I can see she never received my response.

I can also see now, that her friends and improv community have been fundraising to help with her medical bills for much of this year.

What I’m feeling won’t be a breath of a whisper of what they’re experiencing. My heart goes out to everyone who truly knew her, especially her partner, Karl.

I don’t have the right to feel as sad as I do. But I do feel sad. Sincerely and sharply.

Because I knew we would meet some day, at some improv festival, somewhere. And we would shriek delightedly and say Look, you have legs and it would be like we had always known each other that way.

Old friends, breathing the same air.

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Radio contact

Radio is making sure I’m alright.

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