Death

This is the weekend of freak events. All my gripes, all my complaints about work but this weekend sure puts things in perspective.

I received a call on Monday. From Beat. She relayed to me the most shocking news. Our hairdresser had committed suicide over the weekend and she had passed away. I was so shocked. She was 25, and although she was never the perkiest person, I would not have envisioned her as someone who would take her own life. I only started going to her this year. She was recommended by Sharon and Beat. So I went to the funeral, and ended up sitting at a table full of her former clients. Sharon was distraught because she was close to her.

It turns out that her suicide made headlines on the Chinese paper on Sunday. A quick glance at the papers revealed that she had downed pills and sealed her room and filled it with fumes from a charcoal burner. And to Sharon's horror, this was the exact way that Sharon's friend had committed suicide earlier this year and Sharon had mentioned it to Koko. Koko's response had been "Only someone with guts would have killed herself like that..."

I told my colleagues about Koko's death. Only to find out that that very weekend, my former colleague KOS's young 2.5 year old daughter had been playing in her balcony, and had slipped and fallen from the balcony. I hardly knew him, but it didn't mean that shock didn't surface again... So many things can change in one split second. One moment there is a living breathing being, and the next...

E told me that a stage manager she once worked with on some stage productions was working on stage over the weekend, when suddenly a prop fell on him and he passed away too. @#$%$#@ What's God trying to say? What's with all these freak accidents? I have to say that suddenly, a stab of fear ran through me.

I am not afraid of death, but incidents like these never fail to remind me how transient life is. How should I live my life to the full, in order that I capture and appreciate every moment? I don't think satisfaction would come entirely from this job of mine, where sometimes I go hours without speaking to a single person...