Her Life 1987-2004

Everyone's been asking me about my second friend. As much as i'm grateful for your thoughtful wishes and sympathy, i'm a bit tired of re-telling the story over and over again...because everytime that i do that, it reminds me of her and my last memory of her wasn't especially perfect... Therefore, for the benefit (or whatever you want to call it) of all... i'm just gonna tell her tale one more time...hopefully it'll explain all your questions that you've been meaning to ask me...or just give you a little insight into her life...or just make it a good read and help you appreciate the little things in life...like having a good and well-functioning heart.

Her name's Felicia Yuen Sook Yuen and she's a year younger than me. When i was little, i was put into the care of my babysitter and Felicia happened to be her granddaughter. we'd play together when we were children, because her family was literally one of the only families i knew.. and since i was an only child, she was about one of the very few friends/playmates that i had. when i was 10, my mother told me that the doctor said that she would not make it past her 20th birthday.

She was born with two or multiple holes (i forget how many) in her heart...and as an infant, she went through many MANY operations to fix that defect...but it never really cured her, it just bought her time. as a kid, i always remembered being warned by my babysitter not to play excessively or too rough with her...she's frail, fragile, perpetually with blue lips and fingers because blood could not reach to those extremities, she would gasp for air after about 20 minutes of play and she'll always be looking out from the windows watching me and her sisters and cousins play. that's how i remembered her as a kid.

time and time again, i would arrive at her house and ask for her, just to find out that she's in the hospital undergoing some surgery. back then, i didn't think much about it because to a kid, operation means 100% recovery...and when she came back she would proudly show me her scars, her marks of honour as she would tell me...and it all became a game. the last i remembered, there were 4 all together.

we grew up together, from primary school, to secondary, playing, me helping her with the homework, eating young green mango with the gooey sticky black sauce, going to the markets, brushing our teeth together, playing computer games, watching chinese serials and cartoons, riding bicycles outside the house; me cycling, she being the passenger, talking about boys, she being in Convent and me in Jalan Bukit, a co-ed school...going crazy over SweetValley novels and Westlife (ok, SHE was crazy over them) ... there was just so much that we did as a team, she and her sister were like real life sisters to me.. sisters that i never had.

when i finished Form 5, i stopped going to her place... occasionally we'd meet each other in town or at church and talk and laugh just like old times...then i entered college and she went on to Form 5, and we never saw each other again. life does that to you...when you're chasing after your own dreams or purposes, you lose the things that you once cherished and found comfort in.

then one day, after i came home from college, someone rang my doorbell and i looked out and saw her uncle, her 2 youngest siblings and cousins. somehow, i just knew something was wrong. i thought that maybe my babysitter's husband (my babysitter died when i was in Form 1, but i still continued going to the house) died, or something bad had happened to him. little did i know that it was actually Felicia. it seems that she was coming home from school yesterday and missed her mother's car and was running uphill to chase after it...over-exhausted herself, collapsed in the afternoon, died at night.

it came as a shock. i didn't know what to say. i couldn't say anything. all i could do was register what he was saying whilst my mother enquired about the funeral times, the wakes, the cause of death etc. the whole while, i could only stare at Felicia's brother, feeling myself going numb. then they went away.

for awhile, i couldn't feel any emotions, i was just shocked, numb, i couldn't think i couldn't feel i couldn't do anything. i sat, staring at the tv while my mom started crying. and i was thinking,

why are you crying?? of course it's not real, i must still be sleeping cos i normally take an afternoon nap when i come home from coll yes that must be it i'm still sleeping and when i wake up my mom will be in the kitchen cooking dinner and singing to herself yes please wake up please wake up now and everything will be alright and i will tell her about the dream that i had and both of us will laugh over it and she'll tell me not to be silly and why do i have such morbid dreams and then we'll forget about it come dinnertime and everything will be alright everything will be alright.

haha...if only life was like that. to wake up from a seeming dream whenever you're faced with such events.

i spent the whole evening crying in front of the computer, wanting to disbelieve but knowing that it's all true, crying because she was still so young, crying because she was a really smart girl and had her whole life in front of her, crying because i didn't even get to say goodbye to her, crying because i didn't even get to SEE her when she was still alive, crying because it all seemed so unfair, crying because i had just lost a friend, crying because it was the only thing that i could trust myself to do.

at night, we went to her wake...i didn't want to go..i begged to be left out of it but my parents said no, you HAVE to come...there were so many people there...i can vaguely remember seeing Dominic there. i remembered hugging her dad and he telling me that i had lost a friend and he had lost a daughter. i was still feeling composed then, i had told myself that i wouldn't cry, not in front of everyone else... but when we stepped in to the house and for the first time since what felt like forever, i saw her, lying there, inside the coffin.

it was just terrible. the feeling you get when you see someone you know, especially even more so when the person happens to be a close friend, a peer, someone your own age, lying composed inside a box with a sheet of glass over it. it hits you right in the stomach and all doubt that you had before is just knocked away. the cold hard truth is there, sleeping inside the box.

i remember thinking, telling her to wake up, expecting a miracle to happen, please wake up she's awake and her eyes are open and she's breathing and ALIVE and i'll start screaming and tell everyone that she's alive for god's sake can't you see that..?? smash her glass cover open and get her out please she's still alive can't you see that her eyes are open please someone take her out of that glass box!!!

nothing of that sort happened, she just remained sleeping...and it was then that i started crying, bawling, tears streaming down my face like i've never cried before. my mom was quietly stunned, she told me later that she never thought that i was capable of such emotions (nice mom)... i just cried and cried and then i saw her sister, Constance who made up our little band of three...a band now broken forever... i think she too was just stunned beyond belief because all she could do was look at me and hug me...mechanically. numbed.

when we got out of the house, the whispers began to start...people left right in front of me were telling each other how young she was, how she died, that she was sitting for her spm this year..oh dear, how her parents are taking it, how she shouldn't have acted impulsively or else nothing like this would have happened...the whispering just went on and on and i felt like i was going crazy just sitting there listening to them talk about her. come on, we know she's young, we know she's smart, we know she's dead..talking about it won't help her parents or her siblings or her family or me. i know, it's irrational but that's what i felt then and i stand by what i think.

after what seemed like a long while, we went home and i went straight to bed. not speaking because words would just make me cry all over again, not thinking because at this stage, thought didn't really matter, not feeling because feelings hurt.

the next day was the hardest day for me...having to go to college and pretend that nothing happened, trying to keep it all quiet, trying not to let it affect me...just dwelling upon it silently to myself...

it's been more than a year now since her passing, people say that time heals whatever hurt or grievances that we might experience...but i can assure you that it's not over yet for me...when i think about her, i start crying, thinking about her being all alone wherever she is.

Wanna know something ironic? Although Felicia and I have been friends for 17 years, we’ve never taken a picture together. I don’t have a picture of her. Nope. All I have is just a memory of her face, of how she looked, how she sounded and I know that that too will fade in 20, 30, 40 years? One day, she will just slip away from my memory. maybe then, time would really have helped...

for so long i've kept all these feelings in me...it's finally good to let it all out...maybe writing about it WILL help me to get over it...i don't know, we'll just see... an Asian culture is not a forgiving one upon self-emotions and expressions, sad to say. probably it was one of the reasons why i never told anyone about it, not even to TPL or Elaine, except as a passing remark, because it would make people think that i wasn't strong...or something along that line..i don't know how to put it..i can't explain..but hopefully you'll understand.