Tuesday, July 26, 2005
a beautiful composition. commonwealth essay winner. read it to the end. you'll not regret.
A MomentThe walls of the hospital were always white. They smelt of disinfectant, a sharp scent that stung the inside of the nostrils if you breathed too deeply. He saw old people in wheelchairs, and transparent masks over their faces, and wondered whether they breathed the same kind of air that he did. He spent a long time wondering about such things. There was little else to do.
Other boys in the ward had toys, and books with colourful pictures and large black letters that he did not know how to read. There were flowers by the side of their bed to take away the scent of starch and sanitized linen that permeated the air. He supposed that he ought to envy them, or wish that he had what they did. But there was not enough time in this life to envy. They would not take the flowers with them when they died.
His mother cried every time she came to see him, holding his hand between her rough work-callused ones and spilling her tears on his thin wasted fingers. She could only stay for a little while, because her break at lunch was only an hour. But there were nurses who came to smile at him, nurses with sad eyes and white clothes that smelt like the linen, full of starch and disinfectant. He always tried to smile back, though sometimes it hurt. And sometimes when he met their eyes it hurt more, inside his heart where it did not show, because they pitied him so much. Would they still smile at him if he were not lying in a bed, waiting to die? Would they care so much about him if he could laugh, and walk on his own, and run on two sturdy legs? They frowned at boys who did those things in the sober hospital corridors.
He followed the path of the fan blades with his eyes, they went round and round like his thoughts, circling about one theme and never going any further. He had been told, very gently, that he was going to die, and he believed it. There was a pain in his legs, all the way up to the hip, a black pain that reached up into his life with a clawed hand and slowly strangled it. His mother had burst into tears, and clutched at him with both hands. She did not want to let him go. She did not want him to die, because she loved him. But it would not hurt any more if he died, and surely if she loved him then she would not mind if the pain stopped.
Everyone had to die. He knew that, in the way you knew things in dreams. He was not sure why he knew it. Dying ought to be treated as something happy, something wonderful, so that the living could let the dying go. That way, his mother could let him go, and it would hurt both of them less. I love you, she kept on saying it, the most powerful words she knew. I love you. It made him feel guilty to make her suffer so very much.
He wondered if his making her cry counted when he died. He wondered if he would go to Heaven or Hell. He had surely failed in a great number of things. He was the oldest son of his family. He ought to be trying to help her. He was supposed to take the place of his father. He was supposed to be strong. Now he could not even stand by himself, not without crying out with pain. Perhaps weakness was a sin, too. Sometimes in the night, he would cry, because it hurt so much, and that was weakness, as well, because boys were not supposed to cry.
Every time his mother left him, it was with the instruction to pray for his immortal soul. He could see the fear in her eyes, and he knew that she was afraid that he would die when she was not there, and there would be no one else to comfort him. She thought that he would fear dying. But he saw it as a relief, because then he would not hurt any more. There was only mild regret in his heart for all the things he had not done. He would have liked to see his little sister grow up, her with her big eyes and unquestioning trust and ways of bursting into tears for no conceivable reason. He had never seen why she should like to cry so much until leukaemia had begun to eat at his bones, and then he had cried more than she did.
Now he folded his hands together, and he did pray, because of all the things he had left outside the white walls of the hospital. He prayed for his sister, because he would not be there in the future to take care of her. He prayed for his mother, because she had grown haggard and tired with worry. He prayed for himself, because he had not been strong enough. And he prayed for God, because no one could ever answer whether God was happy or sad, or whether He wept for the suffering on earth or laughed for the joys there were for the living.
The afternoon clouded over, and a light rain began to fall, a patter of droplets on the roof like the feet of fairies dancing. The world turned grey as if God was crying, but he did not know whom for. If He were to cry for all the children in the hospital, then there would be very little tears shed for each of them alone. There were very many hospitals in the world, and there would surely be very many children in each of them. There were not enough tears to go around.
Perhaps it was selfish to think that way, to divide up love that was divine and boundless, or measure sorrow by the number of tears falling. He did not need anyone’s tears to comfort him, not even His, because he would die soon anyway, and then he would not need pity, or tears, because it would not hurt any more.
The drugs injected into his arm had made his thoughts wander, and made all his fears seem distant. He could lie in a dreamy daze, and quietly tell himself that he was lucky, because he no longer desired to have the flowers that other boys had, or envied that other children could play in the rain. Envy and greed was something reserved for the living, because such things no longer mattered to those who were going to die.
He gazed at the rain, and listened to music of the raindrops falling, each one making a different sound on the roof, a tonal melody. The raindrops were dying, too, outside the window where a boy with leukaemia lay thinking of death. Yet the drumming did not seem sad, or regretful, but instead a rejoicing that their brief lives had been spent so well.
They fell, one by one, each one unique, and yet very alike, fountaining as they fell into puddles, like tears springing forth in the midst of laughter, and sorrow and joy mixing at once. It came to him then, as he watched the rain falling, glassy and silver: he would not have known how good it was to run and play, if he had not lost the use of his body. He would not know how sweet a human smile was if it might not be one of the last things he would see. His mother would not treasure his life so and refuse to let him go if he was not, irredeemably, going to die. The world needed the darkness, or the light would not be so bright, or as glorious.
He raised himself up on his arms, and sat up in bed, gazing at the rain. Each drop glittered as though there was a piece of sunlight at its heart, ephemeral as a moment of time going past, each slice of time beautiful because it had not ever existed before, and would never exist again; and they were doubly precious to him, because he had so few left.
He had been so afraid of dying before, seeing it as a great shadow looming behind him, and with every breath it grew closer. When he had been younger he had similarly been unreasonably afraid of his shadow, and run all day, trying to run away from it. His shadow would always be just one step behind him, tauntingly close and never lagging behind, even if he suddenly sprinted away, hoping to take it by surprise. But there were consequences to running very fast and looking behind you at the same time, and he had fallen down. Then he had looked down and seen his shadow under him, and screamed.
If he looked only at the shadow of death now, then one day he would look down and see that it had come upon him, and that would be a great waste, because he would not have seen the last moments of light in his preoccupation with shadows and darkness. The world held both the light and darkness, and would not be complete without either. He laughed, his eyes bright in seeing the beauty of this mingling; laughed for heart’s ease and joy, and smiled at the falling rain.
A nurse walked by, and she heard his laugh. She stopped, looking at him, and wondered what a dying boy had left to smile at on a rainy afternoon. Then he tilted his head and looked at her, and for an instant she saw the light of the veiled sun come to life again in his eyes, a soft warmth to his smile all the more plangent and beautiful because she knew that by next week she would not see it again. For a moment she had to blink tears back, and wonder at the unfairness of it all: such a small boy, with such a sweet smile, and the chance of a life, should be destined to die.
She smiled back at him, a weak smile wavering over the edge into tears, and quickly walked past, so that he would not see her cry. He surely had had enough of that, with his mother weeping all over him every day.
He lay back on his pillow, listening to the rain fall. He wanted to call after the nurse, call her back and tell her all about what he had realized; tell her how beautiful the rain was, because the sun was going to come out. But perhaps she would not understand, and laugh at him, yet the prospect of that did not seem so very bad. The understanding was all the sweeter because it was uniquely his.
He closed his eyes, and the sound of his breathing slowed as he fell asleep. The rain cleared, and light came through the window again, and fell upon his face, a strange halo. He dreamed, and in the dream he was running for joy, in a place full of light and shadows, and it was perfect.
beautifully written by
kang min li from
RJC. i love it. i really do.
Saturday, July 16, 2005
back. =)
alright bah, life at school. i find myself more hardworking. even the people sitting around me were shocked. that goes to show that, i was NOT hardworkin at all the last semester. lol.
had debate. versus eliot. ha. they won. they were really good. haha...
going out with twinnie nic later. yaps. get dance stuff. yah.hahaha. hope it'll be good.
day 2. seems like everything's out from your mind. you spoke it all out. and im wondering if there is still left overs. because i think i cannot take it anymore. ur words. such powerful words, pierced my heart like a dagger. and now im left with this shattered heart. everything you said, appears to be 1o times more influencial that one words from anyone else. you've broke my heart. and only you can unbreak it.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
im back. erm.. like since when i came online? lols. long story. anyway. life was ok back in sch. changed my geog teacher. i want my mrs hoo back. like real bad. i miss her laa...
learning carnival was ok. L.O.S.T in chinatown was fun. you'll get LOST in chinatown. -.- hahaha. but with tt group of peeps, life's nv boring. xD hahaa.. coach carter was not bad too.. "i am your new BASKETBALL coach." those pple say basketball with a cool accent. *winks. lols.
well. i've been gettin new revelations by the day. lols.
the person u love can make u the happiest and or the most miserable person around. just little actions and little words can do 'wonders'. yeah.
wonders. simple things become complicated, complicated things get simplified. haha.. that's how it is i suppose. hmm.. just like wat i've said earlier. the person mayb not even know. so that's the whole story. someone gets hurt, and the person who hurt don't even realise. HAHAHA. like nvm.
and u just did it once more.
