A Fool Spent from Defiance

And then it all voices down to being too idealistic, thinking that real life is like a TV drama.

So the adults were right.

The atmosphere in the ward during my uncle's last moments was terribly stifling - or no, it was intensely sad. I've come to understand that it is at the point of finality that is the breaking point for most people, the knowledge that the heartrate monitors have gone flat for good, and that the weak revivals of heartbeat are lost to the straight line on the screen. The funny thing is that the lines aren't completely straight, they're slightly, only very slightly, jagged. Or it might be some illusory trick that your eyes play when you stare too long at the screen. All I remember from that night is that we each have got our different ways of grieving, but mostly it has to do with tears.

The few nights this week I've spent going down to a certain multi-purpose hall in the Jurong West area. At the wake we get to see all kinds of people. People you never knew were related to you.

"Carolyn, Vanessa, come over here, this is my cousin and her husband, call her so-and-so and him so-and-so."

"Orh." Repeats after mom in a mumbly voice. I've never seen these people in my life.

"Ah, hi, hi. Waaah, both your daughters look like you ah." Some acute observation skills there.

And what can we do but smile condescendingly at the tableful of old people.

One cousin said "The best places to find a partner, are at weddings and wakes."

At the wake you get to shake hands with all kinds of people. Is it possible to tell the maturity of a person from the way he shakes hands with others? There were gangly teenagers who were awkward in handshaking, those who put only their fingers into the grasp, and try to take their hand away too soon. And then there were adults who used both hands to shake, fully engulfing your hand in theirs. Being the anti-social person I am of course I was hidden behind Bessie and Phillip with Joe, who also had a bout of anti-social last night. I was looking straight into the handshakers' eyes to see if I could find out anything. I gathered that about 64.7% of them probably have never seen the man lying in the coffin throughout their entire lives before.

But you definitely have to appreciate that they took time off to come to the wake, to spread a little love to the man's relatives. And you have to admit that a wake with a large crowd definitely gives off a better vibe as compared to one that only has a few people sitting around right right?

My aunt had the warped idea of taking photographs of the wake for remembrance, and the honour of the task fell on me. It felt strange. It was like someone was pulling a weird joke. What kind of memory does that make? Definitely not a happy one.

Later will be the last time I get to see my uncle in flesh. The cremation's taking place tomorrow, but there's a damned exam in the way. How funny that most organisations and institutions only allow compassionate leave for close family members. Who's to judge if family members are close or distant? What's the measure of relationships?

All bad things like happening at once don't they.

What do you say when you're faced with a man who has leukemia?



When leukemia, or any other sort of sicknesses, rear its ugly head in your face, you must not flinch. The real ugliness in sickness is not the sickness itself. It is the state that the patient is reduced to in the battle against it. You have to be there to fully understand the gravity of it, and to witness the extreme unpleasantness of it. The stories you hear on TV, they may make you cry out of sympathy, but when it comes down to the reality of it, you find that you don't cry much at all.

In fact, you don't know what to think of it. One part of you tells you "Look here now, his condition is deteriorating by the day, and they're all preparing to let him go, there's really nothing you can do now," and another part is saying "Well, maybe it's not that bad, you look at him, and you know that he wants to carry on living, and maybe, just maybe, that will keep him alive." And when you do cry, it's not out of sympathy, it's out of the prospect of loss.

There are times where you will feel angry too, and frustrated, and many times you will feel extremely helpless. Extremely. You feel angry and frustrated because all the adults are getting pastors to carry out baptism ceremonies, standing around discussing which undertaker's services should be engaged, which church the funeral should be held at, when the only thing you know for certain is that the man doesn't look dead to you. Dead people don't breathe. Dead people's pulses don't register on monitors. Dead people don't lie there fighting for life. And then you feel extremely helpless because you don't know how to make the man feel better, and you probably can't anyway. But it doesn't stop you from feeling helpless.

It's never as simple as sympathy.

When wave after wave of complications hit - fever, fungal infection of the lungs, blood infection, kidney failure, cardiac arrest, as if having leukemia was the green light for all other illnesses - all you can do is to stand there and watch him try so hard to breathe. You try to guess his thoughts, what he's thinking of when he's lying in bed, but it's probably too complicated, and a young girl like you probably won't understand. Is he in extreme pain? Does he miss his wife? Has he lived life the way he wanted? But mostly it's the pain question. Is he in a lot of pain?

You stand there listening to your mom stroke his forehead and repeat "don't worry okay? Have a good rest, just follow the light," and she asks you to speak to him. While all the time you're slightly angry, thinking, why do you ask him to rest when he doesn't want to, can't you see he's trying hard to fight for his life? But then of course you're never really sure if he still has the will to live, because whatever willpower he has might possibly be negated by pain.

There are all these thoughts running through your head, and your mouth is very dry. What's there left to say when they're all convinced he's not going to make it? When the only moment of brief consciousness is when the man opens his swollen eyes for 4 seconds and tears. When all you can see is the tube leading into his left nostril, and more tubes leading into his mouth, and you wonder where they end in the body. When you get gripped by paranoia when the damned heart rate monitor gives a long loud beep, and your mom, your dad and you immediately jerk your heads to look at it.
What's there left to say at this point?

When the hospital bills by far total up to at least 45 thousand dollars, and you see your aunties and cousin keeping vigil outside the ward almost each day, how does anyone know what to do? Who has the right to make decisions for the patient then?



What do you say when you're faced with a man who has leukemia?
What's there left to say?