a sad piece of news...

he was just sitting at dr wong's clinic the other day, and this morning his picture appeared in the obituaries.

that was the first thing my mom broke to me shortly after i woke up...and she spoke in a kinda flustered voice "不要讓你的爸爸知道!"....that was a elderly gentleman by the name of mr.loke....i've never spoken to him b4...but we did exchange glances at dr.wong's clinic during my dad's chemo-days....he started his treatment a little later than my dad....and was usually accompanied to the clinic by his wife and daughter...

and all that i could recall when i saw him at the clinic last week suddenly became vivid flashblacks in my mind...i saw him ascend the weighing machine, had his blood pressure taken...was waiting for his consultation alone....he looked pale and weak....and somehow i didn't quite notice how much he had thinned since he's already a rather lanky man the first time i saw him at the clinic...chemo makes pple lose weight faster than marie-france-bodyline...and i didn't see any difference in him...i wonder why he was at the clinic alone last week...

my mom was speculating he might have collapsed because of complications in the side effects of his chemo, and no one was there to rescue him...maybe it's just cos his days were numbered fr the day he found out he had cancer....it all happened so fast...although we were complete strangers, i am shocked and saddened by someone whom i've brushed shoulders with..someone who was just sitting beside me at the clinic last week...and the next moment, he has left this world....and then it made me realize the same thing could happen to my dad if he wasn't fortunate enough to detect his cancer at an early stage...this is a piece of news that my dad should be kept away from...we don't want him to be saddened and affected by mr.loke's demise.

I'm beginning to wonder how it'd feel like to walk into dr.wong's clinic again...to see in the nurses eyes the unspoken yet known sadness of the demise of mr.loke...maybe they're already so used to seeing cancer patients come and go...

i believe mr.loke was a good husband and father...cos he had the face of a good familyman. His family and friends would definitely have appreciated the marks he'd left in one way or another in his entire lifetime, and would so dearly miss him from this day onwards. I hope he receives protection and true happiness at where his soul resides now, free of the troubles in the human world, and he and his family be blessed and bonded tightly together as one, in each of their hearts.

He was 67.


~