A Peek into the Crossroads of Life and Death

The hallways are lonely, and the lights dim. The food bland, and the air dry. Sunken faces, and tears of loneliness. Fates unknown, and yet fates for some,known, already. These are the common features of a place that is often slightly lighted up by the kind nurses the sleek infrastructure and the conscientious doctors.

I stepped into one a few days back. Ward 64, patient 30, bed of my maternal grandmother, Yeo Char. Born in 1924, shes a fine example of a living person thats both strong and yet weak. She had been required to an MRI scan which required a straight posture they had arched her straight and thathurt her really bad. She was turned in that machine over and over again. For half an hour. She came out crying non stop, with wails, " Wa jin gan kor, wa jin gan kor, ho wa si la wa jin gan kor"

The four walls of a hospital are serenaded by the word solitude. Each bed has its troubles, worries, and urge to let go and meet their maker. Some, just cant bear to leave. Irregardless, the scary thing of being in that ward is too see ur neighbor gone the next morning one by one. The tests, the needles and the pain withno clue as to whether you have that chance of witnessing dawn and dusk. The hospital is one of the scariest places ive been since that day.i had never seen my grandma cry before. I guess it told a story of everybody's experience. Regardless of race language or religion, they were all here for the same reasons, to come and get out or to come and go.

IN the ward, you have 6 simple beds with curtains and a rollin table for lunch. A public sink and the accompaniment of a stiff bed and two pillows. Visiting hours are from 3 to 8 and you wear light green clothes given to you. In ward 64, there were malays indian and chinese and all of them with already faces that told you how complicated and tiring they were and some that had the freckles and the look of pain tell the story for you. But wat hurt me most was not the story behind their arrival, but the presence of noone by their beds. It is general solitude that keeps one at bay. Orson Welles said, “We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone." But without that, solitude is a glorying misery that we bask in with no choice.

As i walked down the hallways i saw different lives of different people with their fates both known and unknown but what was scary wasnt that. What i figured was scary was when it came to night. It is at night, when you are alone on your bed with nooone to talk or see, that your thoughts run wild. It is not easy to deal with loneliness much less the prospect of youre ending future. The pain of thinking through all this relates to every layering experience that my mother and uncle had when they had cancer. They went through the exact pain, the exact rooms and the exact food. One things for sure,m they had no idea wha was coming up for them, they just knew there were inthe hospital and they were near paradise and near realism.

Life does not present itself on the food platter. Life comes as it is and we play along. Life, is the art of drawing without an eraser as John W. Gardner once said. We follow the rules sometimes, but sometimes we are meant to break them so we get even better. Life is a beginning but whose to say death is a revelation. It is the final awakening. For the moment we make our first breath, it is the beginning of death. The hospital is an entrance to that byway. The Crossroads of Life and Death.

Night