Month Two

Two months ago, I arrived in Penang for my best friend's baby shower.
A week(or two?) later, I sat in the airport to leave, still coming to terms with
all that had happened, finding my mother dead after the baby shower,
making arrangements with my aunt in the funeral house, the mortuary
the wake, the funeral, the crematorium, cleaning out her effects,
her entire life..just gone..
so unexpectedly. I tried to write this then.

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No matter what you envision when you think about the people closest to you dying,
nothing ever prepares you for the fact.

Your imagination cannot begin to conjure it.

It’s been a week since we found mother, tried to get into the locked front grill,
then once we were in, battering down the room door.

A week since I looked at Cheryl and told her I did not want her there,
I could not have her there.

I thought that mum had finally gone and done it,
the suicide that she’d threatened off and on.

And I could not bear Cheryl’s last memory of our mother being this.

There was a flicker of optimism, maybe that she’d just needed a break,
gone on a holiday, away somewhere.

That thought filled me with anger, for making us worry,
Cheryl at 14.

But deep down inside of me, I already knew she wasn’t there.
I couldn’t feel her presence.

I took Cheryl downstairs, called her dad, called my aunt.

I had awoken early that morning, gripped with a slow panic.
And I told Sean at lunch, I said ‘I think my mum is dead.’

Cheryl and I had been trying to reach her all of the day before (Friday)
I called John, he said he’d tried Thursday.

So after I left John battering the door and I took Cheryl downstairs,
he phoned me to tell me that ‘Mummy is gone, Ja, she’s gone’
and I said ‘What do you mean gone?’ turning away so Cheryl couldn’t hear me.

‘Gone’.

I told Cheryl.

My aunt says we were crying when she arrived, but everything for me,
from then is a blur. I remember bits and pieces, others my friends and aunts fill in.

I remember Vig, Kok Meng, Chee Tuck and Ian arriving.
Me telling them point-blank. Asking Vig to go and check.

Aunt Nat says that I was crying on the phone, I kept telling her to
"Just come home, just come home!"


I never thought that I’d find myself in the mortuary 9.30pm,
Saturday, September 26, signing the papers to release my mother's
body. Or there again to identify her, pick her up and take her to the
funeral parlour.

I never thought at 26, that there would be no mum.

I never thought that I would have to collect her death certificate, anyone's death cert
at this point in my life.

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And then I couldn't write anymore, I boarded my flight and I came back to KL.
Joe called me out for a drink, I said I'd just have one, I was pooped.
He said "You'll have as many as I deem fit."

And now, sometimes I forget, I look at my phone, I think
"Oh, I'll call mum" then realisation hits.

Sometimes I dream about her, wake up crying, and I can't say I regret

but I feel the loss of all the things that I had planned to do with her
how I had planned to try and mend our relationship
move away from last year and what we had been in my teenage years

I wanted to stop being the mother, be more of her friend,
then have her be more of my mother.

And now, when I watch a movie with the slightest familial
or even romantic emotion in it, I'm waterworks
because I miss her for all the times in my future that I will need her
my next heartbreak, my marriage, my children.

For Cheryl, finishing highschool, going away to college
for Cheryl growing up.

So, two months on, I really hope she's in a better place.
And it was peaceful, I'm glad it was peaceful, because my biggest nightmare
is that it wasn't.


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Cheryl and I go on our first holiday together in 2 weeks
Two sisters, different fathers, 400km and 12 years apart

We will be on a boat sailing the Andaman sea towards Thailand
I dreamt of it, of dolphins trailing behind us, her face lighting up
and I can see us, our feet dipping in the salty water
wishing our mum was with us somehow.