Monday, October 19, 2009

The Secret Garden of losing loved ones

It's 10:48pm and I will be boarding tomorrow at 12 noon to Korea to see my grandma. I never lost a loved one before, well actually someone so close to me before. So such thoughts like "Is she going to be okay?" and "I wonder how she looks like?" keeps running through my head like a NIKE commercial. Usually I like to keep these kind of things private but I decided to share this experience with those who have not yet lost someone.

The tremendous amount of fear is the very first thing that runs through my veins, mainly because I honestly don't know how it will feel. My boyfriend's grandfather passed away and I was there to comfort him and tell him that he's in a better place. Of course I couldn't fully understand what he was feeling or how to comfort him because I have never had a family member or anyone pass away.

I have lost many people, not in that kind of sense but in other ways. I've lost numerous friends to drugs, alcohol addiction and even prostitution. Growing up I saw first hand how a person sways and fall down the wrong path.

My best friend in 6th grade was a real goody two shoes, she never cursed and she NEVER littered. One time we gotten into a really big fight due to my careless littering of a gum wrapper, for god's sake it's a gum wrapper. She came from a descent Hawaiian family, they were tight and always cared for one another. They were well mannered, respectful and very understanding. Her parents always set the best examples possible for her and she followed very well. Then slowly she began to feel low and restless thinking that people hate her. She had a very small flaw, she had a tear drop size of a mole on her ear that was easily covered up by her long black hair. This never bothered me, I didn't find it gross or anything. But the other girls who I hung out with thought differently.

I socialized with girls who mainly cared about their looks rather than the grades they got on their exams, that cared more about who's dating who and what designer brand was most popular that season. So when we started to reach that point in our lives where there was rivalry between girls, they attacked the most vulnerable from the herd.

Boy, did they tear her apart, they played dirty and always got away with it. No matter how hard I tried to defend her and make the other girls see that she's no different that any of us, they ganged up on her even more. So eventually she did "bad" things to fit in. The last I heard was that she was selling herself on the corner to get cash for heroine. Her mother called me and said i was forbidden from seeing her ever again, and just like that my best friend was taken away from me.

This is just one of the stories I wanted to share about how I lost my closest friend throughout the short years of my life. And none of them compares to the thought of losing my only grandmother. i know there are many others out there who wishes that they had more time with the ones that they've lost and I my heart goes out to them. I wish I had more time to love and appreciate her, I wish I spent more time with her when I had the chance.

Lesson learned: Never underestimate the importance of time. Time is like reefs in the ocean and the innocence planted in children. It's something that goes unnoticed, it's beauty is subtle and silent. It's even more precious than the 7 wonders of the world and the generations of mankind. If used wisely, time can be used to experience every experience, achieve the unachievable, believe in the unbelievable, and live the very life that was given to us to its magnificent best.
Without it, the joy we feel, the sadness we learn to endure, the hope we forever hold in our hearts, and the love we express for others are all meaningless. I ask myself "How can we do all of this without time?"

We can't.