5 years on

18 April 2018, 1650H

5 years since I texted you ‘Morning Fats’ or randomly texted you during working hours just to irritate you and to make sure that you are still alive and surviving the long day at work.

5 years since I last saw your face and heard your voice.

Some might say “Wow! So fast she passed away for 5 years”. But to me, it wasn’t all smiles during the past 5 years, and it had been a long journey.

“Grief takes on different forms” and it includes not being able to leech onto your Spotify premium account for free for the past 5 years. I definitely miss how I would subtly annoy you by changing the playlist on your Spotify while you are at work, or how I would secretly log in to your Spotify account and pray that you would not notice it. Or the times when you will text me to ‘scold ‘ me for leeching onto your Spotify account.

I always wonder for the past 5 years what have you been doing in heaven, (this is me hoping that you had been a good girl and is no longer stuck in purgatory) and do you miss us and dream of us too.

For the past 5 years, as much as we tried to live a normal life, the month of April was filled with solemnness. April was the period that it became an ‘unwritten rule’ that neither one of us would travel despite the long holidays so that we can be with each other on the 18 April.

I wouldn’t say that life stood still every April 18, for the past five years, but I made a conscientious effort to revisit the places that we often visited when we were younger, the places we hang out the most as working adults. It was a day spent remembering you.

This year, finally after 5 years, I guess I found the courage to return to work on 18 April and to spend the afternoon remembering you instead of taking annual leave for the whole day. I also found the courage to be alone on this day, as Mummy Lim and Daddy Lim flew off for their long-awaited trip to France, Portugal and Spain.

Maybe this is what grief is about, taking small baby steps to continue with our daily lives even on your death anniversary while remembering you and your crazy ethics.

On this day, I pray that in the years to come, I will never forget how you and I will continue to share stories about the adventures we had as #smalleyelims, and (sadly) continue to pay the subscription fee for my own Spotify Premium haha

25 February 1992 – 18 April 2018
Sending you lots of love fats, from your favourite #smalleyelims.