hmm, yiling messaged me this afternoon to say that her grandma had passed away. i'm sure she must've been a wonderful person but that's not why i'm feeling so sombre at the moment. it's just that it reminds me of the time my grandma died. that was almost 2 and a half years ago, but i remember it like it was yesterday. needless to say, we were very close. i remember i used to go to her house after school everyday and i would stay till the evenings when my dad would pick my sister and i up after work. i guess you can say that she was the one who brought me up, did my laundry and always made sure i had the proper uniform i needed to wear the next day.

i still remember the feeling of uncertainty, the fear, the relisation and finally, the grief that morning, but besides that, i was also glad that she was relieved of her pain. for those of you who did't know, my grandma died from cancer, they think she had bone cancer as well as many others. apparently the disease had spread out to many parts of her body before it was discovered. this was after much testing and the first of many trips to the hospital when she complained of pain in her spine. they finally picked it up with the MRI less then a week before her death. in the last few weeks of her life she couldn't even get out of bed without support and i could see that she was in much pain.

that morning when she stopped breathing, i felt totally paralysed, i didn't know what to do and my sister and i just huddled and cried. my mom was in turkey on holiday and we didn't want to tell her till she had gotten back. so we broke the news on the day she got back and i can still remember her sitting in the airport cafeteria in tears.

i would love to sit here and type you this nice long dramatic story including how my world fell apart and how i wept for a month, but that didn't happen. sure, i was sad and all but i was functioning and life went on. all that stuff about the feeling of it being the end of the world is to me, only something you find in books and movies, not something that happens. so anyways, after about a week, life was pretty much back to normal.

i guess, understand how yiling was feeling the day she realised that her grandma was dying. that was just before the school holidays, about a month ago. in the momentary lapses over the phone i could hear her sobbing and sniffling. it's all to be expected, i haven't spoken to her today, not sure if she's alright, maybe i'll call her later or something. i guess all i wanted to say was that she actually had a month's notice before her grandma died where she could have spent as much time with her but i had less then 5 minutes, i didn't even have the chance to say good-bye.

think i should stop here before the tears start flowing. so anyways, spend as much time with the people you love and do tell them you love them cause life really is unpredictable and anybody can die any moment. hmm, okay, enough with the soppy stuff already....