Life Goes On

This is a post from a year and half ago. Was feeling a little down over the death of our double heart transplant girl yesterday. 

-----------------------------------------------

DURING work at the University Hospital last week, I took a moment at the mortuary. In the lobby stood a lady concealed in an over-sized dark glasses with arms folded across her chest solemnly. Another group of people had just arrived, making their way hurriedly pass the glass door to the reception area. Now I didn't know their stories and their sorrows weren't mine but my heart went out to them. Said a silent prayer for the living and I exited the area not knowing that in a couple of days I'd be rushing through that glass door myself. 

Just less than a year ago, a lady friend of mine had lost her son due to hospital negligence. At 51, she's buried her parents and a 29-year-old son. Burying anyone is not easy but to bury one's own child? That's like against the very order of nature. I guess she was pulling it together with support from her children and dear husband whom she's just lost on Saturday night. In 10 months, while the cut of having to loose her firstborn was still raw, she's lost her husband of more than two decades to a sudden heart attack. A man who'd been her pillar of strength in bad times and a loving partner at all times. So when I went to see her at the mortuary on Sunday morning, I had no words for her. No matter how many times you bury someone, it never comes easy - perhaps it just gets harder with each loss. 

Each loss means one less person to love you or for you to shower love to. I lost my grandma almost two years ago but the reality of it still tugs at me. The sudden and permanent absence of a person who's been there all your life is hard to swallow and I think it never goes away. As the years go by and you see more people fade away from your life, it just doesn't get better. Makes you feel somewhat lonely and fragile when times are bad. At the same time I suppose every death also gives a new meaning to life and helps you see things differently. Personally, my grandma's demise has matured me in some ways. It's been a humbling experience. I've always looked at every funeral in that way and welcomed it as a time to ponder upon life which brings me to the realization that we are all eventually the same six feet under. The living just have too many distractions that drive them into a million separate ways.

When I attended my friend's husband's funeral at the Taman Tun Dr Ismail (TTDI) Muslim cemetery, I noticed Tan Sri(s) and Datin(s) of high places among the people in the hood. Their tombs bore the same difference, below and above ground, with those of ordinary people. My friend's late son's tomb was just two lots away from where her husband's coffin lay, and it was heart-wrenching to see the new widow move from her child's tomb to witness her husband's burial. I couldn't imagine what it must've been for her at that point. 

Yet the real process of dealing with death only begins when you've cast the last lump of soil onto the burial ground and head home. A burial gives closure but by the end of it, you are left on your own to find a personal closure.  It's a long, arduous process with memories rotating in your mind like a 3D slide show. There may be regrets, could-haves and what-ifs but healing's not easy and there's no waltzing your way through it. Death is a mystery but life is a puzzle that can be sorted out.  Sooner or later, there'd be a new hope, a rainbow at the end of a tunnel. 

"I'm still trying to stay strong for my kids," says my friend. 

I guess that's how life rolls.