Buggy, Victoria, Daniel
This post is about three people. The first showed me much love and friendship when I needed it during my insecure primary school years (a girls’ school education is not all it’s cracked up to be). The second I barely knew, all I knew was that her class stood next to mine during assembly when I was in Secondary One and someone once whispered to me that she wore foundation to school you know. The third was someone I had the privilege of sharing part of what were some of the best years and best memories of my life thus far with.
I will start with the third, Daniel, because my foremost thoughts are about him.
Daniel passed away last Friday, 22 September 2011. I received an SMS from a number I’d memorized long ago but deleted from my contact list in a fit of pique, such is the stuff grudges formed in JC are made of.
Together with C’s SMS came an inexplicable sense of loss. Daniel and I hadn’t exactly been close friends, but had been gum enough in JC. M and I also used to call him “Cutie pie” – she changed his name in my handphone to that the day we agreed that he was cute. That was sometime when I was 18. It was the only name on my handphone contact list in JC which wasn’t all in small letters.
I remembered the last time I saw Daniel; he had lost all his hair and looked like he was going to die. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him how he was doing, because the answer was staring at me so obviously.
I didn’t say much more to him that day; I don’t even remember when it was.
C and I sat together during Daniel’s memorial service on Sunday (I’d dislodged the grudge a while ago while beginning to compile the guest list for my wedding, realising that I did want C to be there after all). We both cried, and we talked about the time Daniel had skipped choir rehearsal to audition for Singapore Idol (and got a scolding), talked about the times Daniel did not know his music (and got a scolding, C and him stood next to each other and boy was C sticky about these things). C gave me a light brown napkin made of rough, recycled paper to dry my eyes and blow my nose with, they were all he had. And it felt weird, talking about Daniel as if he were still alive, whole and healthy; as if we were still entitled to think that he was weird for campaigning against pirated music and jaywalking in JC – I’d forgotten that, until one of his friends brought it up in his eulogy.
Daniel wrote about the ACJC Europe Choral Tour in 2005 here. My batch couldn’t go on tour because of SARS and the war in Iraq, and we came back the year after we graduated to tour with our juniors. I read through Daniel’s blog in the office on Monday, and searched for this post because that tour was probably the last time I had any meaningful contact with him.
Daniel remembered and was touched by the same things that I was, that we all were, on that trip.
Here is a picture of Daniel and me at a Chinese restaurant in London’s Chinatown.
***
Buggy (short for Abigail, but not the Abi of the legend on your right) passed away when I was 15. Our families used to be close as our fathers were colleagues, and we got to know each other when we were 9 years old. We used to send letters to each other by post, and family road trips to Malaysia and weekly Saturday night visits were some of the highlights of my growing up years. I still remember the first time we were introduced to each other; I believe it was at my house. We were outside, near the washing machine, and we suddenly asked each other at the exact same moment, do you like rabbits?
That question marked the beginning of a wonderful, imaginative friendship. I remember the year we went to Kukup – we made up a skit where we were called Laura and Mary (I was hooked on the Little House on the Prairie series at the time). We ripped up old bed sheets and made “dirt” make-up to streak our faces with. Not that Laura and Mary led a life of poverty, quite the contrary in fact; but we had a story about two poor girls and we needed names.
Buggy went to SCGS in Secondary One, and that marked the beginning of the end of our friendship. It was partly due to my insecurity and boy-craziness that we grew apart; the things which once made our friendship so dear became uncool and something I wanted to avoid. I remember I once called her with the radio blasting in the background, just so I could show how cool I was by listening to 987FM. I also remember a very stilted meeting we had some time that year, where we didn’t say much to each other. Our parents remained friends, but as their children grew older and busier with school, we stopped keeping in touch.
One day – I remember this was during my short skirt, low ankle socks and layered short hair phase – my mother told me that Buggy was in hospital. She had a hole in her heart and had a pacemaker installed when she was a baby; her organs were also positioned differently, i.e. her heart was on the right instead of the left of her chest. There had suddenly been complications, and she was in a coma. Buggy’s mother asked me to lend them a CD of popular music, in the hope that she would respond to it. I passed her Sugar Ray’s 14:59. I don’t think it was ever returned to me.
I remember visiting Buggy in hospital, and thinking that she was going to die.
The next morning, my mother came out to the living room as I was leaving for school. She gave me a hug and said, Abby passed away last night.
And I remember that I didn’t feel anything. I felt then that I was a heartless person, but there it was. I didn’t feel anything. I remember writing to a common friend we had to say that I didn’t want to cry because I was afraid Buggy would see the tears (or something theatrical and secondary school-ish like that), but the truth was, I just couldn’t cry.
I’d like to think we would have become good friends again, once we (or just me, perhaps) got past the angsty phase.
That year, I cried and cried and cried when Bowei and I finally broke up, and I remember feeling guilty that I couldn’t even spare a tear for someone who had once been so dear to me.
Buggy liked drinking a particular brand of peach tea, there were illustrations of idyllic countryside scenes with rabbits dressed up in clothes printed on the box. I think I still have the box in my cupboard, somewhere.
***
The last person I want to blog about is Victoria. I chanced upon her wake one year in university, when my father brought us all to the wake of his friend’s mother at Singapore casket.
I shook hands with her parents, murmured that I had seen her around in MGS, and wondered just how she had passed away.
***
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? Matthew 16:26; Mark 8:36
I'm glad the major epiphany I had this year was while I was watching Secret Garden.
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