For a friend...

Some nights, if not all, the best time to slow down and think about almost everything in your life is when go to sleep. Here I am, 4am in the morning, writing to--- who, really?

About 2.5 months ago, my friend George was murdered in Crete. It was on the night of his marriage. He had an argument with his newly-wed wife that apparently became violent and she phoned her brother, a coastal guard, to go to where the couple was. The brother did go at their hotel suite and the outcome of the night was the murder of my friend with the gun provided by the greek state to guard the huge coastal borders of Greece, the bride in shock and the brother of the bride fleeing procecution.

I don't know if my friend actually became violent. To me, it is unthinkable that he did. He was definitely one of the kindest and good persons I knew. Still, even if he did he didn't deserve what he got.

I was shocked when my mother told me when I returned from England this past summer. George was an orphan, 5 years older than me. He was a neighbour of mine and I got to know him in the basketball court near my old house. We used to hang out on the afternoons and speak about many things. You see, he had qualified for a course in Computer Programming and this is what I also always wanted to be. He was the best student at his school with an average of 19.3/20. He was more than a friend. He was someone I was looking up to, a mentor. I once asked a cockish self-appointed programming teacher to recommend me a book to learn how to program in C. He replied: "How old are you?", I said: "15". He replied "Go home". I was really frustrated by that guy and George assured me that I could do it if I wanted it too much. George was always kind to me, even though I was so much younger than him at an age that even a year's difference is important. Later on, as my studying became more and more demanding we lost touch. When I qualified for my engineering course I relocated to a different city and he also relocated to another. Our contact became less and less frequent till it became a 20minute chat every year whenever we saw each other. But I always said "hey, come to Volos!" and he would reply "for sure!". Five years after, I moved to England. The motto became "hey, come to London!" and he would reply the same thing. Hey, you know what... this will never happen. When I learned of his death I was in shock for a couple of days. Then life continued. One night during my 10-day vacation I saw a mutual friend of George's and I. We were both on a night club. We avoided to look at each other. We did not speak to each other. We were both embarassed that we were there, supposedly having fun while George was not. George should have been there with us. I should have made more time available for George, because sometimes you just don't know what the next day will bring.

To all of you hot-tempered guys out there, think before you do the most atrocious thing you could ever do. Think what you're doing on someone's child, on someone's brother, on someone's friend. Think what would happen if someone did the same to your child, to your brother, to your friend. Having a gun and pulling the trigger doesn't make you more of a man. It just makes you a plain murderer.

As for me, I only realised what has happened. It's 4.30am, I'm on the other side of the world and I have finally slowed down adequately to have an insight on the past year's events. I feel that the only thing I can do is to write on this electronic substance. Am I becoming more and more insensitive? Do I really think you would know how I feel? I had to give it a try...

Μου λείπεις φίλε. Να 'σαι καλά όπου κι αν είσαι.
Κ.