A death in the family

My cousin, Sin Yee, passed away this morning. She finally succumbed to cancer after months of hard battle.

I loved her. She was very close to my family and played a pretty big role in my life growing up. In a lot of ways, she was the older sister I never had.

Growing up, she would sometimes be the babysitter when my parents are away. I remember how she’d pick me up from school and we’d talk and laugh about everything. Gosh, the laugh, it never changed over the years. She was the happiest and most positive person I’ve ever known and I am not saying that as some sort of obituary courtesy. If there was ever a time anyone in the family was feeling down or facing hardship, she would be the one providing encouragement and support.

A pleasant memory of her during my childhood was writing letters to her when she was studying in Melbourne. I was in Standard 3 then and we would exchange letters about how our lives were going. It was beautiful looking back; that was probably the only time I’ve ever had an ongoing conversation with someone using snail mail.

Even though, in recent years, we haven’t really been in touch constantly, whenever we do see each other, the conversation would remain as warm and lively as always. That’s just her, though. Very pleasant and always full of jokes. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that she was everybody’s friend. Everyone in the extended family loved her.

Which was why it’s just such a damn shame that cancer had to take her away from us. It frustrates me; it genuinely pisses me off. It just sucks that it has to be this unfair. I saw her in so much pain and suffering and I thought that she was probably the least deserving person of this fate.

I’m gonna miss her company. It depresses me to think that I’ll never hear her laughter again.

When I got news that she wasn’t going to make it past this week, I went over to see her twice. But I never got to speak to her. Never got to tell her one last time that I love her. She was resting then and I didn’t want to disturb her. She was in a lot of pain, so sleep was precious whenever it came by. I couldn’t bring myself to be selfish and wake her just so I can have some form of self-fulfilment.

So if you can somehow read this, Sin Yee jie jie, I love you. I’m going to miss you so so much. I’m going to remember all the good times we had together and I’m going to try to live life the way you did: full of happiness and positivity.

If there is an afterlife, we’ll talk again and hopefully, I’ll be able to share my life story with you again, just like how we did in those letters all those years ago.

Goodnight, sis, and travel well.