Of Letting Go...

Only mothers know what another mother is going through when a tragedy strikes her children. Only a mother, who had conceived and went through all the discomforts of carrying and delivering her bundle of joy would understand another mother's predicament when tragedy took away her precious possession; although deep down inside she knew her possession and for that matter, even her own life was on borrowed time.

Who would believe that the child you bonded with from the time he was a zygote to the time when he was laid upon your arms; and with tears of joy you'd scrutinize every part of him ensuring he was as perfect and as normal as any baby should be is now gone? You watched him grow before your eyes all that nineteen years of his life... and that when he was brought into this world, he was perfectly normal; all in one piece...only this time he left this world with only half his body intact? Such is life with so many uncertainties that you are expected to accept, and accept you must.

When I visited Mysarah's teacher, at her son's funeral last Tuesday, I felt for her grief. She was too distraught to speak to her visitors. Only her sad eyes met mine and she acknowledged my presence with a nod. They told me, she had not left her son's coffin from the moment his body arrived from the hospital. Teacher Sheela's nineteen-year old son had died on Monday morning in a road accident involving his motorcycle and (please brace yourselves, my friends...)... with several cars on a highway up north.

As I watched her sitting solemnly and chanting something according to her faith, sadness crept inside me. It was as if I am reading her thoughts. She must have wanted to hold and kiss her baby for the last time like the first time she held him. But all she could muster was a tearful loving embrace over his sealed coffin.
It was too much to bear much less to let go...


*I have written this earlier (before my previous posting), but did not wish to publish it until later on that Tuesday evening while still grieving for this friend, (oh yes...teacher Sheela was MyC's form teacher in her PMR year and her youngest son [the deceased's brother] is MyC's friend since their primary school days)...when MyC came knocking at my bedroom door. She was crying and said that she had never been so sad since the last time when my father passed on. When I told her I was writing this piece but having second thoughts about publishing it, she said, "Mummy, just go for it...it would mean something for teacher..."