The Guy Who Died Behind A Computer Screen

I sat at the dining table in a house overlooking the sea at East Coast. I was accompanied by a set of parents who just lost their son in the early forties. The mum was a friend whom I acquainted with at a funeral a year ago. The Dad took out the insurance policies bought on the Son’s name and I started looking through them, seeing how I could best help them at that point in time.

They had just received a phone call that their son passed on. They were needless to say, lost just like anyone would be with the loss of a child. However, it was slightly different in this case because their son did not live with them and it has been quite a while since they last saw him. It was a queer situation but family relations aren’t always on the best of terms I guess. The only correspondence they had with their son were occasional emails updating each other on their lives. 

The investigation officer who informed the parents of the death told them to meet him at SGH Block 9 at 10AM the following day. It appears from a closed circuit television what happened was this – the Son was playing computer games at a LAN shop before he was seen to be experiencing breathing difficulties. Asthma is not something the son was not familiar with. He had asthma attacks before. However, this time round the inhaler did not seem to be working. It probably ran out of the chemical it was supposed to contain. The son was last seen grasping for air before fainting. When he was discovered, it was too late for him to be revived. 

Death does not feel real until we see it.

The following day, the son’s body was collected from the mortuary and sent for embalming. The parents decided on a direct cremation meaning there would be no wake service. The brother of the deceased flew back from the States to attend the cremation service. Although they were from the same family, the brother and mum both came in different vehicles and at different timings although we arranged for the viewing of the deceased to be done at the same time. The mum started tearing at the sight of her own son in the wooden box. She started to say how she was sorry she sent him away and how she should not have done it just because he was special and different. Well, I wouldn’t know how special or different he was but all I could see was guilt and remorse overwhelming the mum. She was regretful that her son’s life was not long enough for the relationship between them to be mended. Little did she know that her son would go before her, little did she know that time was not on her side. The brother came, took a look at the body and threw up – due to the sight or due to the emotions that was overtaking him that’s something I wouldn’t know till today. The mum offered to send the brother home but her kind offers were rejected.

Somehow, as a third party bystander, it feels that there was a lot of tension in this family. Was it unresolved arguments or misundertandings? Or was it uncommunicated love and care which translated into aloofness? Or was it a lot of condescension towards the son who was deemed special?

That tension carried on even after the death of the son, unresolved. If we could reverse time, I am 100 percent certain that the mum and dad would probably do things very differently. Perhaps the parents would view their special son through a different lens, one which is gentler and more accepting. Perhaps the parents would show a lot more love and concern despite the son being different and not have him sent overseas. Perhaps more effort would have been exerted in building the relationship with the son where they could have been pillars of support for him in this crazy, fallen and dark world.

Perhaps, perhaps. The truth is that we will never be able to reverse time and there are no what ifs, no perhaps. Incidents like that make me ponder about the unpredictability of life, and death – How our last breaths could be spent in front of a screen, or even walking to the toilet to perform the daily necessities of life. The unpredictability of death encourages me to mend bridges and to resolve arguments before it snowballs into something larger, encourages me to express gratitude to those who are kind to me, and to say ‘I love you’ to those that matter. You wouldn’t want to wait till its too late, to regret not having done these, much less carry those grudges down with you in your grave. Think about it.