Today is not a day which you mark on your calendar or you count days...exactly six months ago...also on Wednesday Faizan died, today is just a day to remember him and pray for his soul. Ofcourse I remember him every day, every day something reminds me of him but I couldn't miss today as an opportunity to write some memories I have been cherishing which I wanted to blog about few days ago. Six months one would say is a very short time but I felt like a very long time, a lot of things have been happening. Family is grieving and healing themselves at the same time struggling to live normal routine. His death has changed our lives (my family) in many ways. It will never be the same as it was when he was here, I would say life is just different now. His death has impact me in many ways also, and quite frankly I have been struggling and I keep thinking about him, life and death. With other family members and friends support, I am doing better so is my family. This tragic event changed the way I think of life, it changed the way I think about certain things, I am different person today than I was six months ago. Beside the impact on my personality and thinking, I met a wonderful person with a beautiful heart and I found solace in talking about Faizan with her.

Dealing with death of a loved one, whether a friend or member of your family, is one of the most overwhelming hardships of life. Everyone deals with death in different ways and dealing with this death is one the biggest challenge I face today. Time never comes back, I have to continue the journey I was on – build a career in software industry, go to graduate school, etc and at the same time deal with a huge loss in my life. I went through many of the typical stages of grieving. I was shocked at his sudden death, angry that he had been taken away from his family after only twenty years, and sad that I would never hear his laugh again. I've come to accept the fact that he's gone. I would not say that I'm over his death nor it is something I can get over it but I think of myself coping well with the tragedy. The advice I got was to give myself time to heal and to allow myself a good cry once a while. The pain associated with it cannot disappear.If I didn’t meet her dealing with this death might have been even more hard.

The other day at the park, I saw two young boys sitting on the grass, both of them hard haircut like me and Faizan did when we were young, Faizan used to have “mushroom” haircut and surprisingly the younger of those two brothers had the same hair cut. Even interesting was that they both began to fight which was common between me and Faizan. We did love each other but at same time, we used to compete against each other. I have lots of memories to share but there are few of them which I thought a lot about recently…

Actuary was Faizan’s big passion and that was his major back in college. We both brothers enjoyed math a lot and we used to challenge each other with mathematical problems. One day when I was going thru important papers, my grade sheet came in my hand and it had Statistic exam grade which reminded me a lot about him. One day we challenged each other to take the Statistic Cambridge University O’ Level exam together on a same day and time, it might sound stupid now but it was brotherly love. I have to admit I studied a lot hard then he did in fact the day before the exam he was hanging out with his friends and guess what, he beat me. I got a B 89% while he aced with 93% an A.

I recently played in table tennis tournament at Microsoft and it remind me of old days with him when we both brothers used to spend hours and hours competing against each other on the table. He was a better player than me, he had a lot of patience than me, he would wait till I do a mistake and he would win. We used to have we close games. We used to spend several hours playing table tennis at home and I remember one day my mother got the light bulb removed so that we both won’t play in night but we took lamps from our bedroom and continue the competition. We competed in sports such as swimming, badminton, squash, cricket, and also in studies.      

That’s how I live every day, I cherish the memories and work on making impact on other people lives in positive way. I had little luck in getting the website http://www.faizansewani.org working and I yet have to complete the foundation paper work.

"To sleep, perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come."
                                                -- William Shakespeare