I just received a sad message that my friend, Melina, just passed away. I first met her in Saturday School in Glenwaverly doing Indonesian when I was studying in Melbourne. Met her through her brother, Adhy who was in my class. Melina was a year my senior. She was always so.. cheerful, talking about her week and silly stuff. We used to hang out during recess. I remember she was working in Nandos or something and she complained to me about how she was getting back aches and couldn't lift boxes and stuff, how she was getting more tired recently. Then a week or two later she told me that she had cancer before but now it was back. She had Leukaemia. So she had to stop school and everything and got admitted into hospital. I tried to visit her every weekend after Indo school or on Sundays. Got lost more than once trying to find the Children's Hospital even though I'd been there before. I went there sometimes with Indo school friends and sometimes alone. She couldn't many types of food because the therapy made her digestive system very selective and dodgy. She couldn't eat anything fat or sweet, she had to check her blood sugar level every day too. It was really a new experience for me. How she was so weak and couldn't even go to the toilet by herself because she was physically incapable of pulling herself out of bed.
I remember she told me how people didn't dare to eat in front of her because they worried about how she might get a craving for that food but would not be able to eat it. She told me that she didn't mind because when people eat it, she felt like she was eating it. Like how when I had braces just put on and it was sore and I couldn't chew, I would demand that my family order certain dishes I would've eaten even though I couldn't have any of it, just to make myself feel better. We talked about that. So I bought McD downstairs with one of her friends cuz I was hungry and we went back up to eat and keep her company. I've watched movies with her before. I ta paued food for her and her mum before on the way to the hospital. I went to her house and saw her drawings and cool stuff and we went to get Bubble Tea, and went to ta pau pizza and stuff like that.
When I wasn't in Melbourne anymore I kept in touch with her. She got better, then one day she fb messaged me saying her cancer was back. And even then I was worried. I have read a few fictional books on cancer. The pain in your body that's just everywhere. How cancer goes, then it comes back. For so many years you're just battling, and then one day it gets stronger and it wins and you lose. It's relentless. Just a long, endless fight. Sometimes people get tired.
I was kind of planning to go to Melbourne during my summer holiday in June to see my sister and see Steph and Tur and there were other things I wanted to do. The two things that I really really looked forward to doing was going to visit Melina and going to the youth I went to. I even almost fb-ed Melina to tell her that I might be in Melbourne and that I would definitely go and visit her. But I never did that... and now it's too late.
But you know what the worst thing is? The fact that I ate lunch, skyped Jason, watched an episode of Criminal Minds. Finished that and then went on FB and I got an fb msg from one of the girls, Marini, who was from Indo School who visited Melina with me once or twice. She told me the news. And I was shocked and just reread it and covered my mouth. "Not sure if you heard, but Melina passed away tonight :(". That was the message. Then my phone rang, it was Paul and he asked if I was home, he wanted to pass me a peanut butter cookie he baked. I was excited. Ran downstairs to let him in and got it from him. Talked a while. I came back, read through the condolence messages, sent one to her mum and Adhy. Cried a bit. Got a whatsapp from Denise asking me if I've heard of the app, WeChat. I took a bite of the peanut butter cookie which is really good and reminded me of Kak Piang, the peanut butter pancake we get back home. Googled it, looked at photos of Kak Piang. And now I'm typing this. If you don't get what I'm trying to say, this is it: Life just goes on. My biochem textbook still lays opened on my desk, begging me to study it. My bowl which I had my lunch in still needs to be washed. I take another bite of the cookie. My phone flashes indicating another message from loved ones talking about the awesomeness of my favourite chocolate cake my mum baked.
Rest in peace Melina. Though we were never really that close and I've left Melbourne for almost two and a half years now, you've taught me so much. You've been so strong and so brave, always fighting and being positive. You always complained about the plain, tasteless food the hospital served you; and about all the exercises you had to do to keep your mobility up, but you never really let it get to you. It's so unfair but we all know that life is unfair anyway. I cried when I first learnt that your cancer came back, and I cry now at your passing because to me, you were always that cheerful girl with a huge heart of love and kindness. And I just pray that your soul will be at peace now, and I pray also for your family, that they may be strong, knowing that you have touched the lives of others, including myself. :)
I want to end this with an excerpt from the book I'm reading, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, written by David Wroblewski. This is the part where they explain the past of Edgar's parents before he himself was born, and it's about his mum having a stillbirth in the middle of the night in the tub and the husband, in the same night, building a casket for the baby.
In the house they put two blankets in the bottom of the casket and laid the swaddled baby inside. It wasn't until then that he thought about sealing the casket. He looked at Trudy.
"I've got to nail it shut," he said. "Let me take it out to the barn."
"No," she said. "Do it here."
He walked to the barn and got a hammer and eight nails and the whole way back to the house he brooded over what he was about to do. They'd set the casket in the middle of the living room. He knelt in front of it. It had turned out looking like a crate, he saw, though he had done the best he could. He drove a nail into each corner and he was going to put one in the center of each side but all at once he couldn't. He apologized for the violence of it. He laid his head against the rough wood of the casket. Trudy ran her hand down his back without a word.
He picked up the casket and carried it to the birch grove and they lowered it into the hole and shoveled dirt over it. Almondine, just a pup at the time, stood beside them in the rain. Gar cut a crescent in the sod with the spade and pounded the cross into the ground with the flat side of the hammer. When he looked up, Trudy lay unconscious in the newly greened hay.
She woke as they sped along the blacktop north of Mellen. Outside the truck window the wind whipped the falling rain into half-shapes that flickered and twirled over the ditches. She closed her eyes, unable to watch without growing dizzy. She stayed in the Ashland hospital that night and when they returned the following afternoon, the rain still fell, the shapes still danced.
John Green definitely had it right, there's a Fault in our Stars.
You'll be missed, Melina! :'(
15th of April 2013, Monday, 17:37
Soundtrack of this day: 寂寞寂寞就好－田馥甄
