MELANCHOLY DAYS

Fame and fortune mean nothing when you are about to leave this world. The only important thing is to be with your loved ones. So in a few days my loved ones are going to be with me for two weeks. That is worth more to me than all the treasures in the world.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I am in the midst of re-reading Karen Armstrong’s books, which I have probably read at least twice or thrice in the past. The one I am reading now is about the Book of Genesis regarding the Creation.

Basically, Genesis starts with the six days Creation and while it opens with how God created the entire universe it does not explain what happened before those six days. In other words, it just explains what God did but not what happened before God did all that.

There was God and God did this, that and the other. So while we know the story of God’s actions, meaning the Creation, we do not know the story of God Himself. Whatever happened before the Creation is a mystery that is left entirely to your own imagination.

Anyway, as usual, that got me thinking that what is created becomes uncreated. God was not created so He will not become uncreated. We, on the other hand, were created so we will become uncreated, which means we will eventually die. In the end every single thing that God created will disappear and just as everything started as nothing it will all end up as nothing.

Nothing. That is the key word. We were nothing and then we were created and finally we will be nothing again. Is there any purpose in life, therefore, if the end comes to just nothing? Why create me just so that I will be nothing in the end? What a total waste of creation.

Then it got me further thinking about all those people I have lost over the 64 years that I have been alive. I have lost so many friends since I was in my teens that I can no longer remember some of their names and faces.

Some died from illnesses. Many died violently in car and motorcycle accidents. Quite a number were murdered — shot, stabbed or beaten to death — while some friends just disappeared and were presumed murdered and their body discarded.

I saw my father die when I was just 21 and my mother die when I was 30. My father was 46 and my mother 47 when they died — and to think that I am now 64 and am still alive and have outlived both my parents by almost 20 years.

My daughter, our eldest child, will be arriving this Friday with my three grandchildren to spend two weeks with my wife and me. So we are going to be ‘surrounded’ with five grandchildren (the other two live in Manchester). My three grandkids will, of course, be sleeping with us, that is a must. My other daughter, my youngest and most manja/spoiled child, is coming in July.

At the end of the day that is the only thing that matters, to be surrounded with the people you love.

I lost yet another friend just a month ago, which I wrote about here: In memory of Suflan Shamsuddin.

Suflan was diagnosed with cancer in December last year and the doctors gave him maybe six months or so to live, at the most nine months. He did not survive six months though.

Marina and I managed to speak to him just before he died and he said that the only thing he wants before he dies is to be able to see both of us again. We are like a brother and sister to him, Suflan said. And his wish before he dies is to have us by his side.

After we hung up Marina cried and begged me to find a way in how we could sneak back into Malaysia, illegally of course, and to be with Suflan one last time. I thought we could do that by entering Thailand and then sneak across the border undetected. Unless someone reports us we should be quite safe and not suffer arrest.

However, as I was planning our adventure to sneak back into Malaysia without getting caught, Suflan suddenly and unexpectedly died.

When you are 64 like me and you have lost so many friends and family the only thing that matters in this world is to be with the people you love. (That was what Suflan wanted as well). And that is why Marina and I have been counting the days before my daughter and grandchildren arrive.

Fame and fortune mean nothing when you are about to leave this world. The only important thing is to be with your loved ones. So in a few days my loved ones are going to be with me for two weeks. That is worth more to me than all the treasures in the world.

Anyway, Suflan was my ‘brother’ and I was prepared to take the risk of sneaking back into Malaysia to grant him his dying wish — for Marina and me to be by his deathbed. But he died in four months and not six as we had thought. So that did not happen.

The only consolation is that Suflan and I managed to jam two years ago when he last visited the UK and that will be cherished until it is time for me to go as well. And the song that we played was ‘He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother’.

Sigh…I hate these melancholy days.

SEE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJAhwKultNI