Blood cancer, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) to be exact. Diagnosed late, his symptoms were confused for hard hang-overs from too much partying; the weight loss was attributed to his general light build, for most of his life he and everyone around ignored that he was underweight.

Dimi dies

Rounds and round of chemo – oh, the toll it took on him, it was hard to look at. All this in Sri Lanka, his home country, and the only one he’s ever seen – no, Dimi never got the chance to travel internationally – with no health care coverage whatsoever. So, on top of the anguish of fighting cancer, he and his mom (his only family) had to face the financial burden of the cost of care.

An absolute nightmare, at a cost that would be considered very steep for most westerners, yet alone middle-class not-so-rich south Asians. With that came the indignity of having to ask for money left right and centre, maxing-out credit cards and taking out “healthcare loans”, launching go-fund-me campaigns, and gutting their entire life savings.

Ultimately, what killed him was his bone marrow transplant, the one thing that was supposed to save him, his one chance at survival. Finding a matching donor was very tough. No reliable donor registry exists in Sri Lanka, and even after going through all the eligible friends and family no match was found. His HLA signature was crosschecked against a much larger registry in India, and at long last a viable match had been found. Alas, the donor pulled out of the deal last minute, just before Xmas 2024. What reasons could he have had to do that, we will never know. I wish that person knew his decision effectively killed Dimi, sweet, utterly likeable Dimi, who deserved a chance at life.

So instead, his mum stepped up as bone marrow donor, but she wasn’t the match oncologists had hoped. A few days after the procedure Dimi’s body violently rejected the transplant, and so, he died. Just a few weeks after his 30th birthday, and a few days shy of my ex-boyfriend’s birthday - who considered him as his closest friend – right at the start of the new year 2025. The only child to his single mum, he was everything she had.

Dimi loved life and wanted to live it to the fullest, and deserved to, oh-so badly. He had projects for the future, exciting career plans, 2 adorable little rescue kitties, and a passion for techno dance music that made very popular in the Lanka rave scene. He was a genuinely nice guy, a good person who had many friends, who treated people with respect and kindness - irrespective of who they were or what they had.

Bizarrelly, he was a friend to me too, both as the girlfriend of his mate, and as a single woman after our break-up. We had hanged out many times in Lanka when I was there with my ex, and had started talking regularly online after his diagnosis. That was one of the things that made Dimi so easy to love: he didnt see me just a s his friend's girlfriend, or a "female", he saw me for me, as the human being that I am fundamentally. Maybe that’s why his passing hit me hard, even though I wasn’t close to him by any objective means.

Additionally, Dimi having the same cancer as my work at the Crick struck a very deep chord in me - Was it a very weird coincidence or an act of fate that he was diagnosed with AML, the topic of many scientific projects I had extensively worked on in my job?. That strange overlap between my scientific work and our friendship made me care even more.

Or maybe, the loss of a young man’s life to cancer is so tragic and moving, it’s impossible to be indifferent to it, no matter what connections you have to it

The day he died and the next few days after felt like the world stopped. My life and all my problems seemed to have no importance anymore. The though that the rest of the world kept going almost felt like an insult in the gravity of that moment. How could things and people carry on after such a young and big life had been swept away so swiftly? Dimi died in what seemed like a sudden death – though of course it wasn’t so, he had AML, him dying is not such a big surprise. Had we been told this time last year this would happen, however, no one would have believed it for a second; January 2024 - my ex and I solidly together as a co-habitating couple, and Dimi a “healthy” young man happy and excited about a new job he had just started – now seems like many lifetimes ago.

As I troll through my grieving pain - so small and insignificant compared to his close friends’ and relatives’- I look at myself in the mirror, and I hate what I see. I look increasingly old, at just 34 I already have lines on my face, though I still have acne sometimes. My face seems to develop an ugly asymmetry (I would learn soon later that this was, in fact, due to alcohol intake) emphasised by my badly patched-up chin and the scar on it that I had gotten in a bike accident in my 20s. My right knee is wrangled forever, my PCOS is progressing steadily no matter what I do about it. And yet, I live; What a chance, what a priviledge, I now realise. For all its problems, my body is strong and relatively healthy, it carries me with ease through everything I want to do. It’s not perfect, at least not based on contemporary beauty standards, but it works. It is sturdy and resilient. Dimi didn’t have that same chance, and within 9 months of his 1st diagnosis, he lost everything. As horrible and unfair as it is – many dick-heads get to live long lives, Dimi had to die – such is the nature of biological life; it is inherently very fragile.

As Dimi goes through the cyclic ocean of Samsara once again, I find myself wishing I had the knowledge and power to find him in his next reincarnation and slap him senseless – for leaving us behind so soon, and for the pain his passing caused us. But of course, I know this is ridiculous.. If I could really have the knowledge and power to find him in Samsara, it could only be to comfort him from the traumatic ending he endured, so that he can move on, free from the karmic bonds of what is now a past-life.

As I write those words, in mid-Jan 2025, I am in Ohakune, New Zealand, a sleepy small town in the middle of no-where on the north island. Dimi died a week prior, and accordingly to local laws, was buried within 48hrs of his passing – far too short notice for me, or anyone outside of Lanka, to come on time to pay respects. I never saw him again. My last messages to him were silly IG reels - my attempt to cheer him up and keep him entertained during his extended hospital stays. And then, an eternal silence, no goodbyes, no profound reflections on life the universe and everything. Stupid IG content and some box-standard reactions, those were the very last words we exchanged.

As I write those words, I sit in a cafe in Ohakune. The only other customer is a woman sat near me, rejoicing loudly on the phone to news of a baby girl’s birth – a healthy and happy birth into a loving kiwi family. Could it be him, maybe?