Loss of a best friend

Grief does not arrive the same way twice. It does not knock. It does not announce itself. It simply settles — differently, in different bodies, in different hearts — and what it leaves behind is a version of a person that belongs only to you. Your memory of them. Your particular knowing of them.

I lost one of my best friends a week ago. My best friend. To cancer.

She was a fighter — the kind of fighter who travels across oceans looking for answers, who submits to treatment after treatment with a quiet, almost stubborn dignity. And then one day, with the same clarity she brought to everything, she made another decision. She chose the quality of the days over the number of them. After that, she had a few months. To say goodbye to her children. To her family. To the people who loved her. I was in India at that time, and I am grateful — deeply, eternally grateful — that I was able to sit with her, more than once, in those last months.

Those who knew Sudeepta will describe her as genuine, compassionate, kind, cheerful, and wise. We became friends about a decade ago and hosted our first India retreat together — ten women over fifteen days. We knew each other before, but those fifteen days formed something lasting. Because I live in America and she lives in India, we visited whenever I traveled back and forth, and we always made time for each other.

Our weekly phone calls covered everything — the absurdities of the yoga world, the things that inspired us, family, raising kids, philosophizing about life. I could always think out loud with her, knowing there would be no judgment.

In 2025, during her ongoing treatment, we thought we might be able to travel together. Varanasi — too far. Coorg — maybe. Mysore — even three hours felt like too much. In the end, we got a room at the Hyatt in Bangalore and spent one night together. That was enough. That was everything.

She loved food, and I love food. We went to a Japanese fusion restaurant — Yachuka, I think — and shared appetizers, then walked across to Taj Oriental for old-style fried rice, tofu, bok choy, and sautéed vegetables. We walked back, talked a little, and fell asleep.

The next morning she was determined to find me good masala dosa. That was so entirely her — even then, even tired, thinking of what she could give. We walked to Konark, an old breakfast joint. Closed for repairs. We tried somewhere else. Also closed. She was getting tired. She said, "Savi, let's sit down for a second."

I looked at her and said, "Sue, I've only known you ten years, but somehow I feel like I've known you much longer."

In the quietest, most certain way, she said: "Oh, Savi, this is more than one lifetime friendship."

That was Sue. Deeply practical, able to help you see things clearly — and yet she always kept the door open for mysticism. Both things lived in her, easily, at the same time without any contradiction.

Once I returned to America, I would wake up every morning with a heavy heart and an unexplainable sadness. I would walk into the garden and go about my day. The garden gave me quiet — because the people around me did not feel what I felt. My kids barely knew Sudeepta. My husband had maybe met her once. That grief was mine to carry, in the in-between moments of ordinary life.

One of those mornings, I called my teacher. The conversation was no more than ten or twelve minutes. I told him I might be losing my friend — that when I last saw her, walking along a busy street in Bangalore, she had said, "Savi, I might have six months or sixty years to live." That uncertainty made everything harder.

He asked me to sit with why I was really feeling the sadness. I said, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" He mentioned a book by Harold Kushner — I read it. It doesn't resolve the question, but it helps you come to terms with the unexplainable. I said, "Her kids will have to grow up without their mother. It is not fair." We talked about fairness. It was practical, useful — but it didn't defeat the grief. I don't think you can logically explain grief.

Then he said one thing that gave me something to meditate upon.

"What you're describing — that she is loving, trustworthy, caring, joyful, cheerful, wise — observe those words. Those are attributes. They do not belong to one person. Meditate on that."

Ten minutes. That was all.

I have meditated on it ever since, and this is what I have come to understand:

When we look at someone we love, we are not only seeing that person. We are seeing their attributes — and it is the attributes we miss the most. The genuine smile. The cheerful attitude. The loyal, trustworthy friend. Because we have that one person, we rarely seek those qualities anywhere else. But when we know we will no longer have them, we begin to look — and we find those same qualities in many. It takes effort, but you find them, because now you are open to them. This is not a way to move on, but to carry them with us all along.

And if you don't find them in others, that is fine too. You can simply become that person. You can become the friend that she was for you.

After sitting with this for some months, there came a quiet understanding— a sense that I could keep her memory alive, keep her personality living on, within me.

I will miss her. But there is a part of me now striving to embody her. I don't think there is one way to grieve, to cry, to miss someone. We will keep them alive in any and all the ways we know how. 

Namaste 

Savitha 

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