Posts in category 5. Memorial

Remembering Nathan


 Leave a Comment Written by Chiao Kee Lim

I was sitting on my couch just surfing the internet on my little netbook when an email popped into my inbox. It was an email from my friend, Mitch, whom I met in Fiji in April last year. When I saw the subject of his email – “Nathan”, my heart skipped a beat.  No. I thought to myself. It can’t be. A feeling of dread began to well up inside me as I read his email, one word at a time. He had pasted the email from Nathan’s girlfriend breaking the news about his death. I couldn’t believe it. Or rather, I didn’t want to.

The first thought that bolted across my mind was – but we were supposed to have dinner when he comes to Melbourne next. He promised.  I felt the same ache I had inside me when my friend Ola passed away in May this year – that regret knowing that there will never be a Next Time. So I sat, dumbfounded, lost for words, not quite believing that it is true, and not sure what else I was feeling. I closed off all the browsers and chat windows I had open, and just sat for a little while, digesting that piece of news. He had written in early May about his adventure in Botswana, followed by some breathtaking pictures of the elephants he was working with. I hadn’t heard from him since but I never thought that when I did hear about him, it would be about his death.

He’s gone. I thought – those gentle eyes and his kind smile, the love in his voice when he talks about the elephants he trains, that comforting feeling when he gives you a hug. All gone. Forever. A sour sensation rushed up my nose and tears began to well up in my eyes. Gone and Forever are two words that should never go together, I decided.

The most vivid memory I have of him took place one late afternoon when we sat under the tree on the 50 Cent deck in Tony’s Oneness University in Savusavu, Fiji. It was a quiet afternoon, tarnished only by the sounds of the waves crashing onto the shore in a distant, and the rustling of leaves in the lush jungles that surrounded us. We were talking about many different things and I remember, very vividly, the moment he told me about a special afternoon that he spent with his girlfriend. His face changed when he did so – he looked calm, relaxed and reminiscent, a gentle smile dancing on the corners of his lips.

“We just sat and hugged for hours, without saying anything,” he said. “It was the most wonderful feeling.” I know I will always remember that moment. That moment encapsulates all there was about him, the essence of his spirit – kind, gentle and loving. And that is how I will always remember him.

Losing a friend is never easy. Losing a loved one is even more heart breaking. But in my heart of hearts, I know that, as painful as losing someone can be, there is always a sliver of gratitude to be found – gratitude for having the honour to have known him when he was alive, gratitude for having been touched by his spirit, and gratitude for having been able to be part of his journey on this earth.

To my friend Nathan Jamieson, I thank you for all the memories we shared together, I thank you for all that you have been, and I thank you for all that I am because of you. May you rest in peace.

Chiao Kee

In memory of Nathan Jamieson

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The Thing About Grief


 Leave a Comment Written by Chiao Kee Lim

Grief is a strange emotion.

Last Sunday night, after I had finished writing my note to my friend, my dear friend Ola, I went to bed, heart full to the brim with a deep sense of loss, trying to fall asleep with a side of tears. I did not sleep much that night. I could not sleep much. Lying in bed in the dark, all I could think of was that moment when I stood at the street corner waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green, when I started to cry. Time stood still in that moment. I remember the sensation of the cold wind blowing against my cheeks, my head hanging low, hands tucked in my jeans pockets, empty gaze glued to the gravel on the paved sidewalk, trying to fight back the tears. Trying to bite back the pain.

That night, I drifted in and out of consciousness, half living in a lurid dream. It was as if I had stepped into a time machine, being transported back to the time and place where all my memories of him began. I woke up from my sleep, feeling a pain in my chest, the dreams still fresh in my mind. When I thought of that year in Sydney – the year 2003 – all I could feel was a part of me aching to be separated from the memory of that year, aching to deny that year ever taking place, aching to forget everything about that time and that place.

I had underestimated how painful grief can be. I had overestimated my ability to cope with this emotion – an emotion that is at a whole different level of pain. For the first few days, when my lips parted to speak about my friend, my dear friend Ola, a sour sensation would rush up my nose, my voice would tremble, and a tear would fall. It was as if my heart was stuck in my throat, and every time I tried to talk about ‘it’, tried to talk about the passing of my friend, my dear friend Ola, I couldn’t help but cry. I couldn’t help but feel this deep sense of loss, this sadness that wouldn’t go away.

Grief does strange things to you. It confuses you. It numbs you. It hurts you and it holds you hostage in a time and place when you wished that a memory wasn’t a memory, but the present instead. It is paradoxical and hard to explain. It is an emotion that makes sympathy unbearable, and empathy excruciatingly painful. A relationship with grief is something you have in private. It is something too personal and too raw for the world to see. So you hide it beneath your laughter, beneath the smiles, and when no one is looking, you look away, and you let the tears drop silently, hoping that in time, it would go away. Hoping that in time, you wouldn’t have to try so hard, to pretend that everything is fine.

The good thing about grief is that it diminishes with time. The good thing about grief is that it reminds you that your time in this world is finite, that what you dowith that time is the only thing that counts. It makes you laugh harder, smile wider, and it makes you linger in every moment just a little bit longer, enough for you to soak in the senses and etch it in your memory. It makes every second just that little bit more precious, that little bit more special.

In my mind, God or the universe has a plan for every single one of us. What that plan is, we don’t always know. Somewhere up there, in a giant room, there is a candle burning for every single one of us. And I know that, for my friend, my dear friend Ola, his was the one that burned the brightest in a short span of time. His was like a supernova that illuminates the universe, the burst of light that shines on all that is beautiful in life.

Chiao Kee

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My Friend, My Dear Friend Ola


 1 Comment Written by Chiao Kee Lim

I lost a friend today.

I came into the office this morning to do some work. It was a cold Sunday morning, and the place was dark and quiet. After flicking on the light switch, turning on my computer and settling into my chair, I logged onto facebook and there it was – a status update that told me that my friend, my dear friend Ola, had been taken away from us.

For a split second, I didn’t know what to think. All I remember was feeling a sudden jolt, an electric shock of sorts that ran through my nervous system, and my hands instinctively reached for the mouse and clicked off the page. As if by doing so, I could undo what has been done. As if by doing so, I can un-know what I now knew.

I sat very still in my seat, staring blankly at my keyboard. Not really wanting to know about it. Not really wanting to think about it. So I reached for the mouse yet again, and clicked open a document I had been working on, and started to work. For a few hours, I kept at my work, trying not to think about my friend, my dear friend Ola. Trying not to think about anything at all.

When I left the office, hands tucked in my jeans pocket, walking down the street against the cold wind, I couldn’t help but think about my friend, my dear friend Ola. I thought about the day I met him. The year was 2003. It was a late summer’s day, a warm day in February. I had only just moved to Sydney, and was feeling miserable and homesick for Melbourne. I remember sitting in a small lecture room in the lower campus of UNSW. It was almost two o’clock, and I was early for my first lecture. People started filing into the room in dribs and drabs, mostly in pairs or in groups. They all seem to know each other, and were happy to keep to themselves. So I found myself a lone ranger, sitting in an otherwise empty row, feeling all of a sudden alienated and alone, in a place that I didn’t particularly want to be. Just as the lecture was about to begin, a blonde young man clad in a light grey hoodie and acid-washed jeans sauntered into the room, rucksack slung over one shoulder. Our eyes met, he smiled, came and sat down next to me. His name was Ola. By the end of the first lecture, we were fast friends.

I was thinking this when I stood at the street corner waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green. And as I thought about my friend, my dear friend Ola, tears started welling up in my eyes.

My encounter with Ola was shortlived. He left Sydney after one semester and went on an exchange program to Hong Kong. I graduated from my Masters program and moved back to Melbourne. In the following years, he moved from one corner of the globe to the next, but we kept in touch, and would IM or write to each other from time to time. Even though we were separated by half the globe, living completely separate lives in vastly different time zones, he was always my friend, my dear friend Ola.

The next time I saw Ola was in June 2008, some five years after he left Sydney. I had written to him in April that year, telling him I would be in New York for a holiday and that we should catch up. He wrote back, telling me that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia early that year and had been in and out of the hospital since. He told me that he was scheduled for a bone marrow transplant on the 26th of May and would be in the hospital for four weeks after that. Even with that news, he managed to sound bright and chirpy. He said he was in good spirits, that he had his girlfriend and all his friends around him. I told him that he was in my thoughts and that I would come and visit him when I was in New York.

I flew into New York on the night of the 3rd of June and went and saw my friend, my dear friend Ola two afternoons later. As I made my way across the busy intersection to the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, I hadn’t prepared myself for what I was about to experience. When I stood in the quiet, brightly lit hallway outside the door of his hospital room, the reality of the gravity of his illness sank in for me. Carefully, I slipped the yellow surgical gown over my clothes, tucked my hair under the surgical cap and slipped into a pair of gloves and overshoes, not knowing what to expect from behind that closed door. But when I nervously opened the door and saw my friend, my dear friend Ola, all the nervousness in me disappeared. Looking at him, I wouldn’t have known that he was ill if it wasn’t for the sterilized smell of the hospital room. He looked bright and happy, in good spirits, sitting up in a chair chatting with his mum, who had only just arrived the day before.

That afternoon was the last time I saw my friend, my dear friend Ola. In the coming weeks, he kept me up to date with his recovery. He always sounded optimistic, even if he had lost a lot of weight, had hardly any strength and appetite to go with it. But he was a fighter, my friend, my dear friend Ola. For a while, it seemed to me that he was recovering well. I was scheduled to go to New York for work early this year, and I wrote to him and said that we should catch up. But the trip got cancelled and I never made it there. He wrote back to me saying that next time, we would meet up in Australia. With him, there was always a ‘Next time’.

As I crossed the street on this quiet Sunday morning, the thought that there was never going to be a ‘Next time’ sent tears running down my face. I had lost my friend, my dear friend Ola. I thought about him – my first Swedish connection, the one who had explained to me how the name IKEA came about and how to pronounce it correctly. I thought of him making his signature Swedish meatballs dish on Eurovision night. I thought about his acid-washed jeans. I thought about the book that I had told him I would write, had written but never got around to giving it to him to read. I thought all those thoughts and couldn’t keep the tears from falling.

He was the only person I knew who lived life as passionately as he did. He was the only person I knew who knew what he wanted to experience in life and stopped at nothing to make it happen. He was the only person I knew who was always so upbeat and optimistic about everything. He was Mr. Adventure, Mr. Invincible, my friend, my dear friend Ola.

As I sit here writing this, crying tears of sadness over losing a dear friend, I can only imagine how much harder it is on his girlfriend, his friends and his family – the people who loved and cared for him, who was with him till the end. And to you – the people who had been with him through it all – I hope that you know that he had left the world a better place by leaving behind a bit of something special in every life he touched.

Thomas Campbell wrote, in ‘Hallowed Ground’, that “To live in hearts we leave behind; Is not to die.” To my friend, my dear friend Ola, you will always live in my heart. I will always remember you, your acid-washed jeans, your bright and happy smile, that glint of mischief in your eyes and your inexhaustible zest for life. May you rest in peace.

Chiao Kee

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