rest in peace

I used to think I am very 潇洒; I thought I will have no problems with issues that people will find hard to accept, like death.

That is, until one of my own friends died.

He wasn't exactly a very close friend, but nevertheless a closer one among those in my unit during National Service. Even though we were in different platoons and we hardly worked together, we had hung out together on nights out, played Company of Heroes countless times online, and went for Exercise Wallaby, especially the 2008 version where we were part of a group of seven who went under the Forward Support Group flag.

At Wallaby, we dealt mainly with radio, which I lacked experience in, because I worked mostly with computers. He was, however, the radio expert, and I learnt alot from him. Outside of work, he was a nice and humorous person, and I enjoyed all the times we spent together.

After we ORD, we never really met up anymore, because he flew off to Australia for his university studies, and I began mine as well. Facebook recorded our last photo together in 2009, when a bunch of us were at the airport to send him off, and our last wall post in 2010 where I wished him Happy Birthday [and I realised I did not wish him for the past two years]. I have already forgotten when was the last time we met, although I have memories of us bidding goodbye to each other on the MRT as he alighted at Dover, during one of his summer vacations home.

I have mentioned before how I feel that people are generally more willing to accept the inevitable when it comes to someone who is expected to die soon, like old age or long term illness, as opposed to someone who dies all of a sudden from an accident, and indeed, I am finding it a little difficult to accept the fact that he is already gone just like that. I thought I had read wrongly when I woke up this morning and saw the chain of messages on my Whatsapp and Facebook.

I now know that I am not that 潇洒 after all.

It hurts a little more when he is a friend I actually know, one whom I had spent more than a year in the same unit with, one who I had looked at, talked to, listened to, played with, worked with, ran with.

Thank you for being my friend.

I am going to spare readers [and myself] all the 'Life is unpredictable, cherish what you have' kind of reasoning, because after today, we will be back to wasting our lives away memorising facts for examinations, doing jobs that we don't like, playing games, watching dramas, and ignoring all the friends that we have on Facebook but never talked to in years. Its just human nature I guess; we can't start 'cherishing everything we have' all of a sudden.

Life just goes on.