Death
- sn pubs
- Mar 31, 2021
- 2 min read
Death is a fickle thing, isn’t it? It comes and it goes, never quite tangible, but real all the same. When someone dies, we feel the loss deep inside, yet we celebrate that they have gone to a better place, and celebrate their contribution to the community in their lifespan.
Gazing at the heart rate monitor that had started beeping incessantly, I knew my mother had gone. Passed away. I could hardly process the grief as tears welled up in my eyes, and my heart ached for her. If she were still here, she would have placed her comforting hand on my shoulder, and allowed me to cry into her shoulder. But she was gone. Gone forever. And nothing could ever change that.
“Wishing you were somehow here again
Wishing you were somehow near
Sometimes it seem if I just dream
Somehow you would be here”
The lyrics of an old song I heard my mother play on the radio when I was little suddenly came back to me. I really did wish she was still here. Why, why did we only come to appreciate the things we had when they are gone?
As I mourned for my mother, glimpses of memories flashed before my eyes. The first time we learnt that she had cancer. I remembered how I could barely stop myself from screaming and yelling as the doctor’s words rang loud and clear in my head, repeating over and over. Cancer. My mom had stage 4 cancer. The words just registered before I broke down into tears. There was no hope for her, was there? It was practically a death sentence.
The memory ended abruptly as a few bittersweet memories flooded into my mind. My mother and I playing tea-party together when I was 6. My mother comforting me as I curled up on my bed, and wishing to die due to a friendship problem when I was 10. The huge birthday bash she had thrown for me as I turned sixteen, scraping together three months worth of her salary to pay for the party…
Now, I have no one. My mother, gone. My father, abusive and alcohol-addicted. My brother, dead. Life is meaningless. I just want to retreat into the dark corner of my mind, tucking my consciousness away from everything… but I know my mother would have wanted me to continue on with life. I have to live. I have to, for her. She had always wanted the best for me. As she had put it some years before, “There is no one in life whom you can’t live without.” Before she died, I was living because she took care of me. Now, I am living only for her. To help continue her work, to help others, and to live, not for money but to make others’ lives better. Only then, can I cope with the misery, sadness, grief and anger that will surely make me want to jump, to end my life with a simple step off the roof, away from the world now full of sorrow and pain.
Avelyn Wee
1 Loyalty
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