It was three days ago, a Saturday night. Candan visited my dream. It was short, but she looked happy.
I am since long through with the exams of a student's life. But it was one of those dreams where you are supposed to enter some exams but you find out that you are not ready at all. Although the exams are related to my PhD studies, the classroom is situated at the Koc School where both Candan and I had our secondary education. Anyway, after a short struggle either I manage to get through the exams or find out that they are not real, then the scene changes right away.
Now we are driving along a certain seaside, perhaps somewhere south of Turkey. Perhaps we are celebrating the ending of finals. It is a beautiful sunny day. I am seated at the back of the car and an enthusiastic conversation is going on about life and happiness and we are really having fun. I do not remember who is driving. Suddenly the person seated near the driver turns back and I realize her to be Candan.
In real life, the last time I saw Candan in full health was at a piano recital on 21 June 2000, where she was on stage, performing Für Elise of Beethoven. Yes, she was an appreciated amateur piano player, for those who do not know. I surprisingly learned that she did not share this part of her life with some of her newer friends. Here is a photo of that recital, including Candan who bows at the final part alongside her fellow piano player friends.
After her illness, I visited her once at the hospital but I couldn't enter her room due to hygenic reasons. I could not see her face, then. The Cndan I saw in my dream was not the child of my last memories, but the young lady I see in the photos here. She looked quite happy and she was speaking vividly.
As we talk of happiness, she said that it is love which makes us all happy and she said she was so lucky that she found it in every part of her short life. She said she was so grateful that she found it in Soren.
Unfortunately this is all I remember. That same Saturday we have lost another great friend of that same villain disease (but I did not know it then). He was young too, only 44. These are unforgivable mistakes of the order (or whatever) that decides upon our fate. I feel as if honored members of my universal family are fading away to the unknown.
In life I did not know Candan too well. Our paths have crossed in only several pleasant occasions. Yet after her passing, the sadness and pain that took me was deep. How could a life like this be eternally wasted? Yet as I speak to people and read the pieces of her life here, I am slightly releived to learn that the fragile child I knew had grown to be an extraordinary, vivid young lady who discovered the essence of happiness, made it a center of her and others' lives and concurred so many hearts with this attitude. Not all can feel the beauty of inspiration that comes when one has found the exact way to express her entire soul and spirit. Even a short moment of this is worth many lives. She found this in dance. But I never saw her dancing. I did not even know that she danced. What can we do? Perhaps, if the old is allowed to inherit from the young, we could try to inherit a piece of her spirit and make it endure with a smiling patience through the ruthless tragedies of our lives.
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