In sickness and in death

The past 11 days have not been easy for me and I’ll tell you why.

On 3 May 2007 evening, I received a telephone call from a old family friend from Chicago to tell me that his brother had passed away in Penang. Our families have known one another for more than 50 years.

I did not know that his brother was ill amd wasin and out of hospital for more than a month before his death. The puzzling point was that right until his death, the doctors could not diagnose the problem.

Then, on 8 May 2007, I received an email that an old school friend had died in Penang from the Big C that affected his colon.

On 9 May 2007, more bad news came my way when another old school friend called from Singapore to tell me that his wife had undergone an operation for stomach cancer slightly more than a month ago.

To cap this series of bad news, on 11 May 2007, I went to the Loh Guan Lye Hospital in Penang to visit an ex-colleague from my banking days who was warded for a stomach ailment. But the worse news was that he was in the end stage of lung cancer. You can read my thoughts in my alternative blog here.

Such is the suffering of life. It’s true that there is no permanency in life. Everything is in transient. The cycle from birth to death is never ending.