Call it superstition if you like, but I am now rather convinced one would instinctively sense if/when your time is up, especially coming after what I also heard about my maternal grandfather's death in 1988 and Gerald's in 2000.
Reuben's final blog post has been on my mind the last couple of days, and it's slowly beginning to seem like he not so much predicted his death, but sensed the immense danger associated with the race on the Tonle Sap in Phnom Penh.
It is most likely an instinct sharpened by his experience in dragon boating, coupled with his sensitive nature, so much that he can sense danger so intuitively. But being the strong, brave person that he was, he decided he cannot fall to such instincts.
"Maybe it preparation for going into unfamiliar territory. If anything would happen there, he (italicised emphasis my own) would be able to ensure any threat would be nullified," he wrote.
"It's so hard to fight against instinct sometimes. Yet sometimes instinct is the only thing that will keep you alive. But it can also strip you of what makes you human."
I wonder who Reuben was referring to with the reference to he -- was it his coach, or was it to the Godly Him, whom he didn't capitalise?
Especially after what the national coach said in an ST interview a few days ago, about the "bad feeling" he and some senior team members had of the currents of Tonle Sap river currents. Reuben's ambiguous account might here even suggest perhaps the coach knew about some danger/challenge even before they went over.
And off comments for a facebook picture, Reuben's "bad feelings" about this trip were also apparently confirmed when it also emerged he apparently shared them with a female friend from his secondary school days, and that the coach actually gave him the opportunity to opt out of the trip.
Reading Reuben's blog as part of research to work on a film on his life is fast showing up all those cruel coincidences that you can only decipher on hindsight.
Like how according to Reuben's mom shared Wednesday night, his childhood friend also died in a drowning accident almost 10 years ago to this day. And I think this was what he was referring to in a blog entry recounting a particular dream he had in July this year.
Or the wedding of a good friend that fell on the same weekend as the Cambodia race, that might have kept him here in Singapore. He talked about this in another blog entry, when he was just lamenting about the grand music thing he and another friend were to have done at the wedding.
Or his mother's sense of foreboding and heaviness she said she sensed while praying for Reuben a week or two before the accident last Friday. Or how Reuben nearly drowned almost 10 months ago, but was saved because he wore a life jacket.
She didn't elaborate what water activity Reuben was engaged in when that happened in her sharing on the second night of his funeral wake, but she did say she made him promise to wear a life jacket always from that moment on, after he said it's not time for him to give up dragon-boating yet.
All these research on Reuben's life is making me all angry, sad and depressed, but at the same time wonder about how human instincts and intuition figure in the realm of God's will, an autopoietic sytem on earth and the deal with predestination.
I can't even listen to Reuben's music or look at any of his pictures or writings, without feeling an overwhelming sense of grief and sadness these few days. It's just ironic that Reu had also just in January this year, finished scoring the soundtrack to a film about Cambodia.
I just hope Uncle Fred, Auntie Patsy and Shimona wouldn't be too affected by how Straits Times made this whole "bad feeling" thing the subject of a news story off their website.
I shall leave you with a part of Uncle Fred's eulogy at Thursday's cremation, which was poignant and heart-wrenching simply because of the pain and love imbued in his words.
"He's not in heaven yet, because if he's in heaven and looking down seeing his father crying and his mother upset, and his grandmother upset, he will not want to be in heaven. And heaven will not be heaven...
Whenever you remember and miss him, dont be sad. Instead, close your eyes and picture his smiling face -- a bit cheeky -- and smile for Reuben. And after you smile for Reuben, be like Reuben."
No comments:
Post a Comment