It has been 12 years now

Dear Vincent

You would have been 13 now. I have plenty of 13 years old in my class so I do not need to visualise how big 13 years old are.

Today, I suddenly thought what you would have been like if you are still around. Sensible as I am, I know you had taken a better path. I know that 12 years ago, on May 1, 2002, you probably had decided you had enough. It was like a marathon run for you just by breathing, so said Dr. Cheang. All those drugs they injected into you and force fed down the tubes probably worn you out.

So yeah, 12 years later, I am actually glad you chose to stop breathing altogether and changed our world. It was hard but nevertheless, it was doable for us. In Christ.

Even now, if I hear the song ‘Winds Beneath My Wings’ it still scream ‘Vincent’s song’. So yeah, mommy never forget you. And guess what? I no longer wonder if you still remember us. Jesus did gave us many examples about life and death. So I won’t ask the question because I know faith will somehow reunite us one day. Or not. It doesn’t matter because you were never really far apart from my heart.

So, happy anniversary up there on heaven.

Next week, I am going back to UMMC PICU and walked the path where you had been. The long and crooked corridors, the quiet ward with machines beeping all the time, the gloomiest place on earth where parents prayed for their children to survive. The place where they wrapped you up in some old white-turn-gray bedsheet that costed me RM5, the metal casket that the morgue’s mandatory rule was to put you inside, but saved by Prof’s kindness who let me carry you.

Well, May 1, 2002 had been the darkest day in my life but I know it was also the turning point. I found God. Your brothers embraced Christ’s teachings and we got a little brother after you. So, yeah, all is not lost because we found God.

“Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” And I say yes! I believe. And if anyone can believe Jesus’s Beatitudes of Blessed are they who mourn, they have truly lived like I am now. Praise to You, Lord Jesus.