a realisation of progress

the vcf musical rehearsal for the main cast earlier this evening ended with an exercise designed to help me feel the deepest, most down emotion that my character will be experiencing in the play. and at the end of it, i found out that i may have truly moved on.

the character i am playing, ethan, loses his best friend, jude in the play. well, those of you in the know, i also lost a kindda best friend type of friend in gerald ho nearly 5 years ago. and i was trying to call upon the emotions of yesteryears to try to get a real semblence of what it really is like. after being in the hot seat for what seems like eternity, i realised i didn't have any remembrance of the emotions that raged through my being when gerald ho passed away.

i remembered feeling very numb. and in total disbelief when i got the news in econs tutorial when i was in year 2 at jurong institute. i remembered taking a bus to his place after school, to knock on his door to make sure that the news was real. when i found out nobody except his maid was at home, my heart raced even faster. i reached home, drenched in in a mixture of cold and hot sweat. i was bewildered. i didn't want to believe he was gone.

then i called the rest of my sec 4 classmates who were already at alexandra hospital. they told me not to bother coming down. i sat down in my room. stunned. dazed. shocked. i didn't know how and what to feel.

that night, i called his mom. remarkably calmly, auntie cecilia told me the funeral arrangements. i asked for gerald's sec 4 class tee-shirt. she agreed. i spent the night talking to a mutual friend of ours who told me some stuff about gerald's history which i never knew -- things i won't reveal here.

i went to his wake at st joseph's chapel at the bras brasah area the next day. i was in too much of a shock to tear at all. until i saw gerald's lifeless body in his coffin.

i stood at his coffin. then the floodgates opened. reality struck.

gerald is really gone.

i think my reaction stunned gerald's older brother and his mom. i still find it quite embarrassing that his mom had to console me -- instead of vice versa. i will never forget what she told me with such genuine peace and serenity -- there is no need to be upset coz' gerald is in a better place.

the next day, when he was being cremated, my tear ducts were exhausted. i couldn't sleep the night before. instead, i found myself asking God why gerald and not me?

i found out some stuff about gerald's dad from his mom that he lied to me about. i remembered feeling very insecure -- did gerald regard me as a close friend just like i did about him? i remembered recalling the times at the millenium countdown along orchard road when i was almost crushed in a stampede if not for his timely intervention when he grabbed me by my hand to lead me out of that mess. i remembered the times when we used to play street soccer at normanton park every saturday.

i remembered how once xingteng, gerald and me were resting and talking about what we wanted to do in the future. xingteng wanted to make a lot of money, gerald wanted to be an acccountant, while the idealistic me wanted to be a struggling actor living on bread and water in london. then i said i was going to be the poorest among the three of us. gerald slapped me on my back and told me not to worry coz xingteng and he would give me the cash to tide things over.

yes. mere words. but both gerald and xingteng had the decency and courage to say those words then.

i was sure God blessed me with a great friend. a brother i could call upon.

he used to tell me how much his older brother inspired him. his love for international chess, his desire to get into ocs and most importantly, his sense of humour. he used to tell me long and seemingly irrelevant analogies about his take on life -- all of which i would have forgotten. he helped me collect worksheets when i was largely absent from class in sec 4.

and how can i forget that one time when he dropped everything he was doing and rushed to my home to get my keys which i left hanging at my gate. i only realised it when i reached tan tock seng hospital for my appointment. in my moment of panic, i only remembered gerald. he cycled to my place and retrieved the keys for me. and he did all of this willingly. never once did he grumbled or sounded reluctant. all he did was to placate a super kan cheong me.

i think in a huge sense. gerald and i were opposites. i was the idealistic person, he was the super realistic one. he worked so hard, i was the ultimate bum. i talked big, he walked the talk. yet somehow he made me see the importance of hard work, while at the time of his death, i was trying to convince him to do more in church. to be more of an active christian. i was trying to get him out of the catholic church and into my church.

the singular question that bugged me for years after that was whether gerald would go to heaven.

i never really had it within me to answer the question, until one fine day 2 years ago, God impressed upon me that those who professed and believed that Jesus is the son of God and that He is our Lord and Saviour would enter the gates of heaven. then i remembered a conversation i had with gerald stating the same.

why am i sharing all of these things with you?

i am not saying all these good things with you just to put gerald in a good light. and i am certainly not committing any sort of a "hindsight bias."

rather, all these memories remain fresh as ever in my mind. memories of a friendship that was good while it lasted. yet remembering all these things is one thing. retaining the essence of that set of emotions i went through when he passed away is quite another.

i think i couldn't uncover those emotions just now because quite simply, they are not there any more. i realised i have moved on. i have left that part of my past behind. i have moved on because i have reconciled the fact that my good friend is in heaven right now -- that he may even be laughing at me from above for being so silly all these years.

remembering gerald and his friendship is one thing. retaining that memory of the painful emotions of his death is quite another. i realised i have lost any sense of what that feels like even though i remembered how i reacted.

i guess that could be interpreted as me having moved on. but i am just glad i am not imprisoned by those lingering questions of his eternal life in God. now, at least one aspect of the legacy of his death is somewhat eradicated in me.