I have 3 friends that I have grown
up with since we were all 13-14 years old. We’re always together, even if not
physically; we keep no secret from one another; we are family. On this day 4
years ago (and in the past 13 years, that was the only year I lived in Taiwan),
we said goodbye to one of our “bros.” He was 32; we were all 32; we had known
each other for almost 20 years. Since then, numbers have stopped mattering.
Today, I can still feel the weight of the coffin I was carrying. That seems to
have happened just yesterday while at the same time that seems to have never
happened... because, just like it has always been, I still see my bro BirdHan, hear him talk, and do things
with him, not just in my dreams but in my memories, which are as present and
ongoing as they are about the past. The three of us who are left still talk
about him all the time, not in the way that people remorse about something
that’s lost, but in the way that’s like, well, like it’s always been, like he’s
with us. So now I know he IS with us,
and we have not been left behind. All of us have been together all the same.
And time, and age, those never mattered: a joke we shared when we were 14 is as
fresh as a joke we shared when we were 20 and is as fresh as a joke we shared
when we are now 36.
I had not been able to put these
feelings/thoughts/perceptions/emotions/sentiments in words. Now I have. And
here is a caricature of us when we were in middle school: still the same, I
still got plenty of pimples haha.
我有三個從國中就認識的像家人一樣的bros。四年前(那正好是我這十幾年間唯一住在台灣的一年)的今天我們和其中一位道別。但數字、時間，和年齡似乎沒什麼意義，它仍像是昨天才發生的事，也像是從未發生。鳥涵仍不時出現在我的夢中，我和另兩個bros也總是很自然地就會提到他 – 我們和他作過的事，及他講過的笑話。十幾歲時的事，二十歲時的事，三十歲時的事，都會一直伴隨著我們，所謂的記憶畢竟是現在進行式。
為了今天我畫了一張漫畫，是我們國二時的糗樣。我不敢承諾未來的每年我都會畫一張(畢竟鳥涵提醒我的事就是人生裡沒什麼確定的事，想作的事現在能作就要作)，但總之先拿這張畫和我的bros及認識我們的人分享。
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