Because I could not stop for Death,
Death kindly stopped for me.
(Emily Dickinson)
Death always has a great impact on me and it has been a profound inspiration for writing. When I was 11 years old, mum bought me a journal for my birthday present, but I was really start writing in it when I was 13, when a very good friend from elementary school died of brain tumor. She was a pretty child, and we used to play a lot together in school since her home was only 2 minutes from school. On the 2nd day of the final examination, she lost consciousness in class with a very high fever. The last time I saw her, she was already a human vegetable. A lovely human vegetable, with her pale skin and curly hair, big round eyes that incessantly flickered, and her lips that twitched uncontrollably. I cried my heart out, called her names and held her hands in front of her broken hearted mum, but she was already oblivious to the world. Two days later she passed away and that’s when I started to write on my journal. To really write, every day, until today.
In 1995, my dearest uncle had an ulcer in his mouth. When he was conceived, my grandma caught typhoid so she had to take a large dose of antibiotics. When my uncle was born, he got skin defect in which his skin simply could not heal easily when it’s cut, and in a lot of cases, a small wound would eventually end up as an abscess. So when he came home (he was closest to my mum so he was a regular visitor) complaining that he couldn't even enjoy his cigarette, we thought it wasn’t a big deal. Sure it will be big on him, but he’d heal. Well, it wasn’t. A year later, doctors said it was cancer.
After hearing this devastating news, I made a separate journal, dedicated to him (and afterward I always have more than one journal). I wrote all the developments of his illness, the good news and the bad news, as well as how I felt about everything. I started to write poems around those days when the grief just too deep for mere words, composed thousands of unsent letters to God and to him, put pictures of us together in it, or simply let my tears soaked the papers. In June 2001 I bought a box to put my 9 journals in, a few weeks after he was buried.
Today, I again write because a friend of mine just passed away.
Here’s a little story about Oii (that’s her nickname, by the way). She was my senior during university years, and we got to know each other through a project we did together. But before that, her name resounded well. It wasn’t surprising. There are special people in this world that bring so much energy into your life that you just want to be around them very much. They are easy going, fun, happy, witty, conversant but never dominant that you are constantly attracted to them and sometimes, secretly, you want to be like them. Well, Oii’s one of those people. Oii for me was like an embodiment of a positive energy and of course, you always want to be that.
However, we never got so close. No particular reason, though, I guess it’s just fate. We just never stayed around each other long enough in one place to be able to be bestf riends. However those image of sunshine when somebody mentioned her name in a conversation stuck to my mind and there was always this certain fondness when I thought of her.
A few years ago we were reconnected and I learnt that she was fighting a cancer while serving the country in Germany. I noticed the loss of hair, and the sometimes-sad comments about her illness, but still she was that old sun that radiated just as brightly as before. I was so sure above anything else that she was going to be a survivor. So it was really, really shocking to learn that she was in a comma last week. She regained consciousness earlier this week, but today God decided that she should suffered no more.
I was teaching when I received a text about her death, and I started to cry that I had to leave class for a while. Of course, I’m always all weepy when it comes to death, but it felt as if there was something hollow in the middle of my core. It was funny though. We weren’t even good friends. But the sense of loss was so present, like the end of a love affair.
I went home with the thought of her in the back of my head, tried to figure out why I was so sad. And guess what? Even after she’s gone, she made me want to be like her even more. Because I know by now that she had such a huge heart that she could touch even a distant soul like mine, and therefore I know she must have touched so many souls before and after me. Because like her, I want to be loved when I’m present, remembered when I’m absent, and thought of with affection. Because like her, I want to make other people's life so beautiful that can’t imagine how big a loss her death is for people who are close to her. My thoughts are with them in this time of sorrow. A universal sorrow, as the world just lost another powerful source of light.
Tonight, I know what I’m going to write in my gratitude journal. I’m gonna thank God for taking all her sufferings, putting her in a much better place, and giving her peace at last. I’m gonna thank God for sending her into my life, and teaching me, like all my spiritual teachers, how to be a better person (and this is simply by being herself). And last but not least, I’m gonna thank God, time and time again, for another day on earth for me and for the people I love to celebrate life and those special people who made it worth living.
Death kindly stopped for me.
(Emily Dickinson)
Death always has a great impact on me and it has been a profound inspiration for writing. When I was 11 years old, mum bought me a journal for my birthday present, but I was really start writing in it when I was 13, when a very good friend from elementary school died of brain tumor. She was a pretty child, and we used to play a lot together in school since her home was only 2 minutes from school. On the 2nd day of the final examination, she lost consciousness in class with a very high fever. The last time I saw her, she was already a human vegetable. A lovely human vegetable, with her pale skin and curly hair, big round eyes that incessantly flickered, and her lips that twitched uncontrollably. I cried my heart out, called her names and held her hands in front of her broken hearted mum, but she was already oblivious to the world. Two days later she passed away and that’s when I started to write on my journal. To really write, every day, until today.
In 1995, my dearest uncle had an ulcer in his mouth. When he was conceived, my grandma caught typhoid so she had to take a large dose of antibiotics. When my uncle was born, he got skin defect in which his skin simply could not heal easily when it’s cut, and in a lot of cases, a small wound would eventually end up as an abscess. So when he came home (he was closest to my mum so he was a regular visitor) complaining that he couldn't even enjoy his cigarette, we thought it wasn’t a big deal. Sure it will be big on him, but he’d heal. Well, it wasn’t. A year later, doctors said it was cancer.
After hearing this devastating news, I made a separate journal, dedicated to him (and afterward I always have more than one journal). I wrote all the developments of his illness, the good news and the bad news, as well as how I felt about everything. I started to write poems around those days when the grief just too deep for mere words, composed thousands of unsent letters to God and to him, put pictures of us together in it, or simply let my tears soaked the papers. In June 2001 I bought a box to put my 9 journals in, a few weeks after he was buried.
Today, I again write because a friend of mine just passed away.
Here’s a little story about Oii (that’s her nickname, by the way). She was my senior during university years, and we got to know each other through a project we did together. But before that, her name resounded well. It wasn’t surprising. There are special people in this world that bring so much energy into your life that you just want to be around them very much. They are easy going, fun, happy, witty, conversant but never dominant that you are constantly attracted to them and sometimes, secretly, you want to be like them. Well, Oii’s one of those people. Oii for me was like an embodiment of a positive energy and of course, you always want to be that.
However, we never got so close. No particular reason, though, I guess it’s just fate. We just never stayed around each other long enough in one place to be able to be bestf riends. However those image of sunshine when somebody mentioned her name in a conversation stuck to my mind and there was always this certain fondness when I thought of her.
A few years ago we were reconnected and I learnt that she was fighting a cancer while serving the country in Germany. I noticed the loss of hair, and the sometimes-sad comments about her illness, but still she was that old sun that radiated just as brightly as before. I was so sure above anything else that she was going to be a survivor. So it was really, really shocking to learn that she was in a comma last week. She regained consciousness earlier this week, but today God decided that she should suffered no more.
I was teaching when I received a text about her death, and I started to cry that I had to leave class for a while. Of course, I’m always all weepy when it comes to death, but it felt as if there was something hollow in the middle of my core. It was funny though. We weren’t even good friends. But the sense of loss was so present, like the end of a love affair.
I went home with the thought of her in the back of my head, tried to figure out why I was so sad. And guess what? Even after she’s gone, she made me want to be like her even more. Because I know by now that she had such a huge heart that she could touch even a distant soul like mine, and therefore I know she must have touched so many souls before and after me. Because like her, I want to be loved when I’m present, remembered when I’m absent, and thought of with affection. Because like her, I want to make other people's life so beautiful that can’t imagine how big a loss her death is for people who are close to her. My thoughts are with them in this time of sorrow. A universal sorrow, as the world just lost another powerful source of light.
Tonight, I know what I’m going to write in my gratitude journal. I’m gonna thank God for taking all her sufferings, putting her in a much better place, and giving her peace at last. I’m gonna thank God for sending her into my life, and teaching me, like all my spiritual teachers, how to be a better person (and this is simply by being herself). And last but not least, I’m gonna thank God, time and time again, for another day on earth for me and for the people I love to celebrate life and those special people who made it worth living.
