In this story, Jemi*(26) shares how she fell out with her close friend over communication issues, and now that he has passed away, everything feels unresolved.
Let’s start from the beginning.
Rotimi* and I met at a mutual friend’s house by chance in 2017. We bonded over our shared interest in films and books and became fast friends. We spent a lot of time together and, by the end of the year, had grown incredibly close, almost like siblings.
Tell me more about your friendship with Rotimi.
We both attended the same public university. He was two years ahead of me and studied Law while I studied Psychology. He wrote beautifully and wanted to be a writer at some point. I encouraged him to share his poetry and essays on our group chat with the rest of our friends. I’m not that good at writing, but I would share my journal entries with him if it felt too heavy for me to talk about.
For me, he was a completely judgement-free place to share my thoughts. No matter how questionable the situation was, I knew I could go to Rotimi to vent, and he’d at least hear me out.
My family isn’t very well off either, and so if I ran out of money or I couldn’t get my allowance on time, Rotimi would come to the little room I had off campus to share his foodstuff with me.
When school got too tough, we’d skip our classes to drink beer and argue about our favourite films. Every time we hung out was very pleasant.
It sounds like a great friendship. What happened?
In March 2019, Rotimi suddenly had a seizure, and after being treated at the hospital, he was diagnosed with epilepsy. I didn’t think his diagnosis would affect our friendship, but I was wrong.
He was very ashamed of his condition and didn’t want to spend time with his friends like before. Like most of his other friends, I began texting and checking in on him constantly, nearly every day. Slowly, he started to hang out with us again. That same year, he met a wonderful girl, and they started dating. I was really happy for him.
So what went wrong?
In June of that same year, Rotimi sent me a frantic message. He had gone to the hospital for a routine check-up, but they ended up doing a full-body scan and discovered a brain tumour. He needed surgery as soon as possible. He sounded so panicked in the message, writing about how he thought he was going to die.
Naturally, I panicked too and tried calling him as soon as I got the text. I didn’t get an answer. I immediately assumed it was because they had started the surgery, so I tried calling his siblings, but they didn’t answer either. My stomach was in knots for days. I kept calling and texting him to no avail.
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Did you manage to reach anyone else who knew him?
Eventually, I managed to get the number of one of his friends who lived out of the country. I explained the situation to him and said I really needed to know Rotimi was okay. He was like, ”Rotimi? We’ve been playing Call of Duty together everyday, he’s fine.” I was confused. I asked how recent their last game was, and he said they had just finished one together and were planning to get another game going that evening. I became very upset.
I angrily texted Rotimi, asking why he was not answering his texts but he had time to play online games with his friends. He texted back immediately that he didn’t think it was important and that he was okay.
Wow
I chalked up this behaviour to being super stressed at suddenly getting sick, so I didn’t want to blow it out of proportiom but a month later, he did the same thing.
Tell me what happened.
He sent me a frantic voice note in the middle of the night asking me to pray for him that he could feel himself slipping. He said he was on the way to the hospital, and they were going to operate on the tumour for sure this time.
I woke up early that day to the voice note and texted him to give me details: Who do I call when he’s under? Which hospital was he at? No answer. I called and called and called. I was full of anxious energy because, this time, no one in our friend group had heard from him at all.
It turns out, I was the only one in the friend group he had sent this voicenote to. Two weeks later, I got a call from his girlfriend asking if she could sleep over in my room off campus for a night. She admitted that Rotimi would be joining her, but he asked her to call because he knew I was mad at him.
How did that make you feel?
I was relieved that he was okay, but I was also really angry with him. I told his girlfriend she could come and get the key to the room, but she should tell her boyfriend not to talk to me again.
I believed that Rotimi didn’t respect our friendship by sending me these agitating messages and disappearing with no updates. When his girlfriend gave him my message, he texted me, “ Can we talk?” but I aired the message.
You stood on business. What happened after that?
Yes, and it felt like the right thing to do at the time, but now, not so much. We didn’t talk again for almost six months. I ran into him at a small book fair in 2020, and we started talking again. I told him I hated that he would drop scary messages and disappear, and he apologised. He asked that we pick a time to hang out like the old days, and we’d sort out the whole thing. I happily agreed but told him I’d have his time in a month.
A week later, his girlfriend sent our friend group a terrible message. Rotimi had passed away in the middle of the night from a seizure.
Oh no! I’m so sorry.
My heart was shattered. At first, I thought maybe it was part of a prank, but as the burial details kept coming out, I had to swallow the bitter truth.
It’s one of the worst losses I have experienced in my young life. Sometimes, I see something he would like, and I want to send it to him, but then I remember he’s no longer here with us, and it’s like my heart breaks all over again.
I regret not settling with him that day. I would forgive him a thousand times if it meant he would still be here. He was a really great friend to me, and even though a few years have gone by, my heart has not healed from his passing.
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