stickyriceblog.com

The past few days have been a weird journey of sorts, almost like a “Through the Looking Glass” kind of adventure, with times when I was feeling off-balance and encountering situations and emotions unexpectedly that were well “jabberwocky-ish”.

I am so grateful for all my family and friends and work colleagues. No one assumed that I would not have strong emotions of grief as I am the ex-spouse. And they made sure I did not feel invisible and sidelined even as the curtain of grief fell on the immediate family. I was not allowed to grief alone – and thank goodness for that.

I am especially grateful for my mom who recognised that I needed to go through a grieving process and gave me space to do so on my own terms and in my own way, whatever her feelings might have been with all that had happened in the past 5 years.

Friends and family opened their calendars, enveloping my kids and me with the gift of time and love. Some brought out the alcohol (for me, not the kids!), others soothing tea and cake. Some spent time with us over rowdy board game parties, others just sat quietly with me. Some took the kids off my hands so that I could just be with me. Others were extra listening ears for the kids, so no one felt like they were alone and unheard. And yet others just prayed with us or for us.

Everyone leaned in and allowed me to be sad and respected my need to face the sadness head on. Some friends lovingly “forced” me to talk about the elephant in the room and probed me to dredge up the good memories when I did not feel much like talking, bringing out the much cathartically needed good cry that was there but had been difficult to coax out. Some sent me playlists of sad songs to help get me into the mood for tears. Others were generous with their hugs and silence, allowing the sadness to marinate in the quiet without needing a single word to be said.

Bible verses, inspiring quotes, words of comfort and affirmation, encouragements, condolences, jokes and humorous wisecracks flooded my WhatsApp and Facebook. A physical copy of Sheryl Sandberg’s Option B made its way to me.

A few checked in on me every day, sometimes a few times a day,  ever ready to have a call or to drop in on me. And the offers to be around in the days ahead now that the funeral is over continues to come in.

So thank you everyone for remembering my girls and me: Mom, Fr, Clifford, Amite SQ, Bryan, Gloria, my brothers and sister-in-laws, Serene, Celine, Minny, Edwin, Ged, Patrick, Anna, Beedisha, Donn, Huan Ran, YY, Petrina, Daniel, Jeevan, Kelly, Ryan, Alvin, Joshua, Joanne, Nicholas, Ben, Jennifer, Tracy-Ann, Dana-Leigh, Clare, Agatha, Joan, Kimberly, Francine, Iesha, Shinder, Nidhi, Roland, Zoe and well everyone who called, pinged or reached out and pulled me in for a hug the past few days. God bless you all!

Yesterday, my soulmate, friend and father of my children died. He was 43 years old and just 2 weeks shy of his birthday. I have known him for 24 of those years, 7 dating, 12 married, 5 divorced.

I would be honest: those 5 last years were terribly bitter. And that is not how I want to remember him. I choose to remember him in the good years for the wonderful person he was when he loved me and I him. Here’s why:

• He was a terribly goofy dancer. At the NUS freshman orientation camp where we met, he captured my heart with his goofy dance moves to George Harrison’s “I’ve Got My Mind Set on You”. Fast forward to our wedding day and although he never figured out how to waltz despite the dance lessons, he obliged and tried his best, notwithstanding that the deejay played the wrong song!
• On our first date, he wore spectacles. For the next 17 years, he did not wear spectacles at all. Go figure …
• He hated peas and I had an aversion to corn. When we got mixed vegetables in our food, we would be passing each other his peas and my corn kernel.
• He had a really sensitive nose and was dependent on a steady supply of Kleenex Job Squad Kitchen towels. We often emptied the supermarket shelves of all their Job Squads. And whenever our regular supermarkets stocked out, it was a national emergency requiring us to scour all the supermarkets in Singapore for supplies.
• When I went overseas for an internship for 3 months in our 3rd year in NUS, he gave me a written note in a small cardboard tube (the tubes in the centre of facsimile paper rolls), with strict instructions to read it only once the plane took off. It told me how much he did not want me to go to Greece.
• We were unbeatable at Taboo. We could literally guess the answers within the first few words uttered by the other person most of the time.
• Once, he tried to piggy back me over slippery ice after I had slipped and fallen. He ended up slipping himself and falling, right on top of me.
• He was an unpaid employee of Shell. When I first started working, I did not yet have a driver’s license. He would drive me around to petrol stations to check on pump prices and to deal with operational emergencies in the middle of the night.
• Unlike most Singaporean guys, he did propose on bended knee by a lake no less, witnessed by a bunch of ducks. It was dreadfully cold in the early winter morning and I am sure that was a strategic move to get me to say yes.
• He once took my Blackberry when it was unlocked, looked up his contact information and made some edits without my knowledge. I found out only a few days later when I called him. In the Notes section, he had typed “I love moo moo very much”.
• He bought me Diablo III for my birthday when it launched and because he knew I was too busy with work, he had installed it and created the account for me so I could literally just hit the PC and start playing.
• Even after being married for 10 years, his face would light up when he found me in a crowded room full of busy people pushing supermarket trolleys out of checkout counters.

So to My Dearest Moo Moo, R.I.P. and thank you for the good times. They will live on in my memories, always cherished and loved. XoxO, your munchkin.

5:00 a.m. / Friday August 4 / 17°C / Copenhagen: Running. Yes, running.

Before that, let me set some additional context: I was on a short whistle-stop holiday to attend a friend’s wedding in Copenhagen. Having arrived in the morning just the day before, I’d already embarked on a YOLO schedule to get the most out of my short 3 days in Denmark. The first stop after brunch was Christiania (where I tried a cookie for the first time in my life) in the afternoon followed by a late night out for dinner and drinks at Kødbyen (the meat packing district). 4 hours later, I dragged my jet-lagged, alcohol-infused and drugged self out of a warm bed to go on a Sunrise Running Tour (and the sadistic person that I am, I’d made a special request for an additional 2 km to make it a round 10 km run instead of just going with their standard 8 km tour and to top it off, this was on the morning of the day of my friend’s wedding).

Lena from Go! Running Copenhagen met me at the door of my Airbnb. She was (quite literally!) bright and chirpy in her neon orange running tee-shirt. The heavy mantle of sleep was very quickly thrown off as Lena set a clipped pace and chatted with me as we ran (and I had to keep up the conversation!).

It was an amazing experience. The streets of Copenhagen were very quiet and empty but for the handful of crazy runners or party-goers who had not gone home yet. And having the sights all to myself without having to compete with the usual rabid crowd of camera clicking tourists being offloaded from those large tour buses was priceless.

At the statue of the Little Mermaid, being the only tourist there, it was so peaceful and serene, it felt like something from the twilight zone (imagine mass alien abductions with me and my running tour guide being the last human beings on earth). And the only photo-bombing tourists were two swans that had the audacity to dive and show off their butts to the camera just as Lena was about to take my picture with the Mermaid. Well, at least I got 2 fairytales for the price of 1!

Lena was an awesome guide, showing me both the official side of Copenhagen as well as regaling me stories from a local perspective and letting me in on the side of Copenhagen that was off the beaten path. She was suitably impressed with my Christiania experience and that became the highlight of her FB post.

Our route took us past Nyhavn, the Playhouse, the Admiral hotel, the Amalienborg, Larsen Plads, the Mersk HQ, the Opera House, the Little Mermaid, Kastellet, the previous Prime Minister’s very low-key residence, the Botanic Gardens, the old Townhall and the Cityhall, the shopping district, Christiansborg and the Royal Library.

Along the way, we talked about children, life, love, running (of course!) and pretty much anything under the sun. Lena even suggested running routes popular with single and available runners should I wish to try and snag a date during the rest of my limited time in Copenhagen!

It turned out to be such easy running in the wonderful weather, after saying goodbye to Lena, I made for another 2 km before heading off for a good Danish breakfast and the wedding.

For all you running enthusiasts out there, Go! Running apparently has running guides in more than 40 cities around the world. I know that this will be something I will be including in my itinerary on my travels abroad next time. Who knows… maybe I will start Go! Running Singapore*!

*p.s: I just checked and that slot is not yet taken.

Today I came across what I thought was a really profound quote:

“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.”

– Osho, Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now

It got me thinking about how we view sadness (as something negative to be minimized) and happiness (as something positive to be encouraged). After all, how many times do you hear people telling you, “Don’t be sad”? Just like a wise friend once said to me, light cannot exist meaningfully without shadows, so perhaps happiness would lose its essence without sadness (or just as in the Disney movie Inside Out, the absence of (seemingly pointless) sadness causes the whole emotion ecosystem to go off kilter).

As I think back to moments when I have been in deep sorrow, it struck me how the emotion truly did feel like roots reaching deep into my core. And I recall how those sad moments grounded me, the accompanying pain making me feel very much alive.

And I recall that oftentimes in my happiest moments, a bittersweet flashback to those sad moments will occur, lending contrast and depth to the happy moment, helping me to appreciate and savour the intensity of the happiness in the wider context of my life journey as it blends with the now muted intensity of the sadness that preceded it.

So the next time someone tells me not to be sad, I am going to tell them, “Why not? For how can you truly know what is happiness unless you have experience sadness?”.