21.5.26 - 138 - Grief

Did the run and the swim yesterday. Also wrote a bit of the Miriam story and got the car sorted. Ma and I visited Seletar Mall. We had char kuay teow and water chestnut. I watched the rest of the Legends show. It was good but left me with so many questions. Like why is it so difficult to apprehend drug smugglers and pushers and distributers? It's so mad. Something which is so ostensibly bad for society and allowed to be in the hands of people who will end up taking their own lives with it - why? The only answer can be that most people are considered disposable. They aren't really interested in getting rid of the drugs. That can be the only explanation. In other words, if they really wanted to, they should be able to.

Also they have created the perfect conditions for drugs to take root. Feckless, pointless societies which create sinkholes where drugs are the solution to everything. 

But, this morning - last night - I really felt Pa's absence. The after shock has subsided and now, now the realisation has set in. Not that he is gone, but when I say I did appreciate and loved Pa while he was still alive, I realise this overwhelming sense which is a but a fraction of a single percentage of , that I did not truly appreciate and love him as much as I should have. It is kinda like how I realised that I should have treasured Oisin's childhood even more - which is why I took that extra year off with Ghin. There are no second chances with love and time. So I'm trying not to make the same mistake with Ma - and anyone else I can spend a little extra time with to tell them how much I treasure and appreciate them.

How much of life is spent doing things which are ultimately meaningless and now that I realise this, I need to make sure that this doesn't happen. So yesterday I was with Ma at the Seletar Mall. We have enjoyed our Mall visits. Appreciating the not so simple things - like accessibility, toilets and good simple, affordable food. Nothing is taken for granted. Most of all the time we spend with each other.

Nothing. I think if I allowed it now, if I really let how I felt - the enormity of it - to occur, I would just break. I would take to my bed and there would be no getting up at all. At all.

I don't know, it just took place last night, out of nowhere. I think I can acknowledge how difficult this is, and how overwhelming it is, but I cannot allow it to take me. I cannot. I can see all the times I was selfish and baffling and cruel to him. But why? Why was I so awful to him? My sons were never that awful to me. It was utterly uncalled for... was it? In the end, do we get the children we deserve? Speaking of children we deserve, I also had a coffee breakfast with Oisin. I love speaking with Oisin. He has such great ambitions. I don't know if any of them make any sense, but its kinda like me when I was his age - wanting to make a difference in something. It's wonderful. I'm sure he will succeed. At least he isn't swimming against the current.

I am supposed to take an 'active break' today - not running but walking. I guess I could do that. Walk that distance instead of run it. Then go to the park and stretch. But I feel the running call me in my bones. I would have gone to Japanese Gardens today - except that we are going to get the estate signed off. 

Meanwhile, the idiocy of the world still exists. Genocide is still alive, the English are now buying Russian oil while the war in Ukraine still takes place, the Americans are all nuts. People are still attending award ceremonies. While there is an actual starvation taking place in Gaza, people are injecting themselves with Ozempic. Are human beings actually mad? Yes, yes I think they are.

I have also decided that everything which came after we stopped our relationship with the land is mostly fan fiction. Religion is mostly a best guess at the unfathomable. The ineffable. The animists were at least honest. They revered the thing which gave them life, which was their sustenance. And their death. They lived in honestly. Everything we have done since is just complicate things. Adding layer upon layer upon layer, until we are so divorced and far from the truth that we feel able to manipulate what has taken place. This goes for most everything which we think of as modernity. Sadly. Despite all the advances and illusions of advancement, we are no better for it all and the state of the world, the state of humanity, is evidence of this. The most obvious evidence is the brokeness of our planet. The litter. People doing idiotic things like cave diving and volcano visiting because they have become so numb, so separated from themselves that they must do actual dangerous things when they are alive. It's heartbreaking really.

So strange to not have Pa in any of the photos this trip. I did appreciate him. He knew we loved him. But perhaps I could have done more. I'm sorry la Pa. I'm so sorry. Thank you for everything.