Three cheers for him
It's terrible how things happen, without warning, with so much impact.
Newly-wed couple. New Zealand honeymoon. Car accident. Dead.
I got the news at around 10 30PM. My mum shouted, Kenneth one of your school teacher got into a car crash at New Zealand. I was at the comp, I rushed into her room and asked who was it. She said someone named Ho. The news had finished by then, and I didnt know any teacher by the name of Ho. And it wasn't till slightly later, on msn when a friend msged me, that I found out it was actually Mr John Lim.
The shock I received there and then was the first of its kind I received in my life. As with , I am sure, many others, I stared at the message. And stared. And stared and stared. As with, I am sure, many others, I felt numb.
A friend came on later and he said "how is it people only start appreciating other people once their dead...i just find that so... hypocritical? so yeah. i didn't really know him, but i'm sad. but i'm not going to mourn or pretend that it really affects me so deeply." As with, I am sure, many others, I felt that "why appreciate only when he's gone/why didnt I appreciate him more" feeling. I've got an answer for it. But nevermind, I'll leave it as that.
You know me, I do not pretend. I do not become hypocritical; the fact that I speak (somewhat viciously) to certain people at some point of time is testimony to that fact. So let me say this. Heartless as it may sound, if it were any other teacher in NY [or in fact, any from my previous schools] whom I did not know, I would've have, to quote from that friend again, felt only a "slight pang of never seeing him (or her) alive again". But John Lim, to me, is different. He taught me PE, I've talked to him a couple of times, I admire him, I like him, and now he's dead.
He asked me how I felt, because he (nor I) had ever experienced such a loss before. I told him, "you will picture the lost one. and whenever you picture him you'll feel a sense of loss. over and over and over again."
Why this sense of loss? He had been married for just a month. He was there on his honeymoon, and planned to stay till christmas eve. And just imagine, to him with his newly-wed by his side, with a nice good time in the country, at a ripened age of 31, he would've felt like he had his whole life ahead of him. With all due respect, I wonder what was going through his mind as he looked at this world one last time. I wonder what I would've thought.
And of course, a sense of loss because I'll never get to see him again.
This feeling of loss got coupled with a ghastly feeling after the initial numbness wore off. Throughout the past hours I found myself lying on the mattress staring at the ceiling, zoning out, imagining things. Things like what if someone close to me met with such an untimely fate. My father, grandfather and some close relatives are in china now. I imagined myself in the shoes of the deceased's family members. I imagined myself meeting such an untimely fate. And as my mind roamed more and more, I--somewhat involuntarily--pictured myself in those situations in greater detail, and when you think of that kind of things you feel..I dontknow how you describe it, scared maybe? A very profound type of scared, a very ghastly sense of life and everything.
It'll come and go, I know. Tonight I would think. When I wake up tomorow I would lie on my bed and think. By the weekend the feelings would have evaporated to nothing more than "that's the way life goes". By the start of school only some residue of feelings of loss would remain, before the school does a one minute of silence thing and probably a speech that would fire me back to the full impact of this loss. And then they would say we'll remember him in our hearts and life has to go on, and life would go on then.
Shrugs.
Newly-wed couple. New Zealand honeymoon. Car accident. Dead.
I got the news at around 10 30PM. My mum shouted, Kenneth one of your school teacher got into a car crash at New Zealand. I was at the comp, I rushed into her room and asked who was it. She said someone named Ho. The news had finished by then, and I didnt know any teacher by the name of Ho. And it wasn't till slightly later, on msn when a friend msged me, that I found out it was actually Mr John Lim.
The shock I received there and then was the first of its kind I received in my life. As with , I am sure, many others, I stared at the message. And stared. And stared and stared. As with, I am sure, many others, I felt numb.
A friend came on later and he said "how is it people only start appreciating other people once their dead...i just find that so... hypocritical? so yeah. i didn't really know him, but i'm sad. but i'm not going to mourn or pretend that it really affects me so deeply." As with, I am sure, many others, I felt that "why appreciate only when he's gone/why didnt I appreciate him more" feeling. I've got an answer for it. But nevermind, I'll leave it as that.
You know me, I do not pretend. I do not become hypocritical; the fact that I speak (somewhat viciously) to certain people at some point of time is testimony to that fact. So let me say this. Heartless as it may sound, if it were any other teacher in NY [or in fact, any from my previous schools] whom I did not know, I would've have, to quote from that friend again, felt only a "slight pang of never seeing him (or her) alive again". But John Lim, to me, is different. He taught me PE, I've talked to him a couple of times, I admire him, I like him, and now he's dead.
He asked me how I felt, because he (nor I) had ever experienced such a loss before. I told him, "you will picture the lost one. and whenever you picture him you'll feel a sense of loss. over and over and over again."
Why this sense of loss? He had been married for just a month. He was there on his honeymoon, and planned to stay till christmas eve. And just imagine, to him with his newly-wed by his side, with a nice good time in the country, at a ripened age of 31, he would've felt like he had his whole life ahead of him. With all due respect, I wonder what was going through his mind as he looked at this world one last time. I wonder what I would've thought.
And of course, a sense of loss because I'll never get to see him again.
This feeling of loss got coupled with a ghastly feeling after the initial numbness wore off. Throughout the past hours I found myself lying on the mattress staring at the ceiling, zoning out, imagining things. Things like what if someone close to me met with such an untimely fate. My father, grandfather and some close relatives are in china now. I imagined myself in the shoes of the deceased's family members. I imagined myself meeting such an untimely fate. And as my mind roamed more and more, I--somewhat involuntarily--pictured myself in those situations in greater detail, and when you think of that kind of things you feel..I dontknow how you describe it, scared maybe? A very profound type of scared, a very ghastly sense of life and everything.
It'll come and go, I know. Tonight I would think. When I wake up tomorow I would lie on my bed and think. By the weekend the feelings would have evaporated to nothing more than "that's the way life goes". By the start of school only some residue of feelings of loss would remain, before the school does a one minute of silence thing and probably a speech that would fire me back to the full impact of this loss. And then they would say we'll remember him in our hearts and life has to go on, and life would go on then.
Shrugs.
2 Comments:
you blog fast. and it feels strange being referred to as 'a friend'. i have a name you know. =) take care.
I guess our own mortality is questioned in a way when a death happen to someone we know. It is a ntural process, and it happens everytime, but it's the thought that it'll never happen to us is our usual mentality. I guess somewhat when it happens to someone we know, someone we have met, someone we have talked to, maybe we realize that we are indeed vulnerable to death.
- Strider -
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