Love and loss.
was posted at 2:15 AM with 1 comments
Is it possible to lose someone all over again? What extent can we say "out of sight, out of mind", what draws the line between someone's presence in your life and in your heart?
My biggest fear is to lose my mother again. To lose her slowly in my memory, as I grow older, without realising it. What will keep my memory of her alive? I want to pen it all down, as much as I can. As much as my memory can bring me.

My mother was the most giving person I will ever know of. I can still remember when I was on the brink of entering teenage-hood, somewhere around the age of 12 years old, my mother tried to hold a serious conversation with me- "What would happen if I was no longer around?". A nightmare that would be realised before I would turn 14. Her words were clear, full, and so certain that as much as I tried to dismiss the horrible thought at that time, they have stuck with me. She told me two important things- Live. Go on with life. And the second was to donate her organs to those who needed it.

I can't explain it in words how difficult it was to carry this in my heart during the nine day period where she was lying unconscious on the hospital bed. I can't explain how frightful it was for a 13 year old to tirelessly handle the back and forth of disappointing and hopeful news, to decide if she should place her trust on relatives to have faith and hope or on the judgment from doctors that was raw and painful.

I wish that no girl would have experience having the first flower given to her to only be placed over her mother's coffin. I also wish that no girl would have to experience the most tormenting feeling when she realises she could not fulfil her mother's last wish because it was too late. It was too late to donate my mother's organs, because her heart had already stopped beating. I had waited too late to her deathbed because I was holding on to every string of hope possible thinking that was the only way I could prove my faith to God, thinking that she would still come home. I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself.

I wish that no girl would have to write a eulogy of her mother when she still needed her to sleep at night.

The second eulogy that I had to write in my life was three weeks ago. The day before my final paper, I woke up to a phone call from my father that my grandfather had passed in the early hours.
I got a text message right after my law paper from my cousin saying that the wake service was in a few hours and whether I could send her my eulogy to be read out, and I remember having to walk home in the pouring rain, frantically trying to keep my thoughts together even though I was already so exhausted from the whole exam period.

An excerpt from my eulogy for my grandfather:


"My grandfather was an English teacher. When I learned that at 6 years old i thought that there was nothing more respectable than that. I had a big passion for writing when I was a child, and where I would spend my holidays at my grandparents' writing story after story, my grandfather had always been the most keen and enthusiastic reader, giving me immense encouragement and support.
Fast forward to today, I am a university student and I am struggling to find words that could describe how great my grandfather was. I don't think words can ever suffice, and for that I think that we can only hold on to the dearest memories of Ahkong. 

My grandfather was not only an English teacher, but he had been the backbone of the Choong family and was an amazing example of a grandfather…."

I don't think I'll ever be able to understand God's timing at all. Why I was only a few days short from being able to attend my grandfather's funeral. Why I could never have a last say to two people I had loved so deeply.
What I only do know in my 19 short years is that even though grief has been an accustomed visitor in my heart, it hurts even harder to learn the loss of another loved one.