The loss of a dear friend, translated…
Lin Lin, although you’d married far off, to Brazil, but you’d always made the trips to and from Brazil and Taiwan a lot. I’d e-mailed you regularly, and you’d replied back to me, most of the times, but, this time, it’d been a year ago since I’d last sent you an e-mail, and, there was, NO replies, and I’d not thought too much on it, just thought that you’d been traveling, and having fun, and not gotten the time to write, until that day, I’d gotten a call from May, and she’d told me, that she’d heard from a friend, that you’d, gone to heaven already.
not my picture…
The friend mentioned how you’d had this long-term cough that never quite got healed, and, as you’d come back to the VMH to get diagnosed, the doctors told you it was lung adenocarcinoma, you were hospitalized for over six months, and had the target treatments too, but, the cancer still took your life. I’d recalled how I’d broken my hips, although you’d not visited me at the hospital, but you’d called me up like clockwork, it’d made me feel so warm. And, during your hospital stay, you’d not wanted to alarm anybody else, or maybe, you’d wanted some quiet time so you can get better soon, so that, was perhaps, why you didn’t call May and I up? But to us, this was, no trouble at all, plus, my mother is hospitalized, and, from Zheng-Shin Hospital to the VMH, it was only a little over ten minute walk away, I’d not needed to make a trip, and I could’ve given you the boosts you’d needed.
You and your husband were once really into the Chinese medicinal practices, you’d left your kids in Brazil, and went to China to take up lessons in acupuncture, and I’d heard, that a lot of the Asians in Brazil were able to make full recoveries because of you both, but, there was, nothing you could’ve done, for your own illness, it is, all fate’s doing.
grieving, for the loss, of a dear friend…not my photograph…
An American professor I knew, a few days after we’d visited him, his mother died, there was a classmate who’d offered his condolences to the professor through e-mail, but the professor wrote back, “Why would I need to grieve for my mother? She’d gone to heaven to live out the rest of all eternity, you should give her the blessings for it instead.”
For you, Lin Lin, I’d carried this sort of mindset too, I hope, that you are, doing well, spending a wonderful time in heaven, and, I do hope, that these words will, get up to heaven, to you.
So, this, is a person’s way, of finding closure to her best friend’s death, and, this woman knows, that her friend who was more than kind to everybody else she knew, had found a perfect place in heaven, so, there’s no sadness, no sorrow, to knowing that she’d passed on, maybe just a bit shocked at the beginning when she was told of the news of her friend’s death, but after that, she’d sent all her blessings heaven bound to her friend.
Life, the Obstacle Course 