Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Understanding

We had lunch today, Guat Tin and I. It was a noisy busy Indian restaurant, brimming over with life. Food piling up on every banana leaf on every table. People eating too much and talking too much. I said to Guat Tin, you've lost weight. She said, ya, no appetite and I keep waking up at night.

Just over 3 months since Mei Phing left us, and the grief lies below the surface of our lives. Shimmering and simmering like a silent boil. Shading every second of our existence. Slanting the hours of our everyday in ways we cannot completely comprehend.

And so, we shuffle along and speaking of the strange symptoms which have taken a hold of us, we hope to find some solace, some redemption for the cruel state of affairs which has overtaken our lives.

It is the state of being human that we grapple forever with the lack of understanding and clarity about our place in the larger scheme of things. Even on hindsight. But sometimes, it is the only comfort we can truly gain when we finally accept that we can never really know everything, neither change things to become the way they used to be.