To many people, it might seem that time has flown by and it has already been 1 year since Kevin left us. However, it feels like a decade has lapsed since the last smile he gave me seconds before he lapsed into a coma.
Weeks before the anniversary date, I alighted at the wrong LTR station and I ended up where I used walk to have dinner with him on weekdays. Time suddenly stood still and I could still recall our day end conversations about the time to meet ... I fondly remember how he used to bring my slippers so that I could walk home comfortably.
The best part of my working life was working alongside with him. Of course we had silly quabbles (which couple wouldn't ... having to see each other almost 24 hrs daily) but there was always a sense of fulfillment when we completed the day's work and return home to our 2 dogs. Although he wasn't a crazy animal lover like me, just to let me have 5 more minutes of sleep each morning, he would get up earlier to feed them so that we could get to work on time. It was also him who normally reminded me when their food or vitamin supplements ran out ...
Each time I have Teochew porridge, I would remember the suppers we had at Zion Road where he simply loved the fish with the sour and spicy gravy. Later we did find the same version at Upper Serangoon Road (thankfully as we have since moved to Sengkang).
It seemed like ages ago since I last heard his hearty laughter ... although it has only been 30 months since our world turned topsy turvy. I wished we bought our digital camera earlier, so that I could capture the other happy moments in our lives before he fell ill.
Working on capturing memories of his life into a slideshow, I spent many nights recalling how we caught our first crab, fish, abalone ... went for movie marathons, our road trip with our friends to the north of Perth ... how I used to cook 3 dishes every night in Perth for our dinners to cater to his fussy tastebuds and how he used to play basketball till he forgot dinner has already gone cold
I was once so mad that he kept me waiting till almost 10pm and I shoved all the food into fridge and tried to sleep. The smart boy anticipated the volcano erupting so he and his partner-in-crime quietly bought hot and sour soup from my favourite chinese restaurant, Billy Lee's, to appease me and his partner's girlfriend (the 4 of us were housemates). At that point, I was fuming but the sight of him coming in his sweaty basketball attire with the takeaway soup looking so sheepish, I could only burst into laughter. Well, of course out came all the food which I prepared and we had supper along with the takeaway soup.
Looking back, the happy times shared didn't stop when his illness came, in fact, whilst we were fighting his cancer, we reached out to each other even more and shared the contentment of having the warmth of each other and the love from family and friends. We didn't want to waste precious time as we both accepted the reality that even though we are going to fight the cancer positively, there is no guaranteed cure. He was very open with his feelings and he didn't want to shy away from reality and if there is anything he could control, he wanted to control how he lived his life.
So we would plan the little activities which he could manage without feeling too tired like baking his breads, making pizza, cooking lasagna, trips to compasspoint to buy ingredients, night trips to Ikea to do some furniture shopping. When I returned to work, my mum will take him to the nearby mall for their favourite subway sandwich and when I returned home at night, he would have some story or two to tell me. When he gets too tired to talk, my mum will fill me in the events and he would smile each time he wants to emphasize certain points When he had more energy, he would be the one telling me all about his day.
As he grew weaker, we had to learn how to read his body language or signals so that we could anticipate how he would feel. Most of us will take it for granted that taking a bath is a simple action, but when one is ill, taking a bath could zap up all the energy. To assist him in his bath, everything has to be in place before we start (he was particular in the clothes he wore so we had to chose the correct ones beforehand), otherwise, the extra few seconds of waiting could rob him off a few breaths of oxygen. Once he was all nice and comfortable, the smile on his face was all I needed to carry on. (I used to tell him that our kids should inherit his set of teeth, not mine, as I always loved that smile)
Of course he had his many moments of frustrations and the only thing I could do was to hold him tight and with a short prayer together, we managed to overcome those moments.
Even now when I type this posting, Kevin's darling black princess is sleeping beside me and I can vividly recall how she used to beg her "father" to give her attention and she was the only dog that Kevin had a soft spot for.
The days will continue to pass, now it has become 1 year, soon it will be 2, 5 ...15 and the day will come when we will meet once again.
