In Continuum.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly with my two tiny palms, the gaps between my fingers were slowly gathering sweat. Other than the area illuminated by the headlights, the rest of the small road around me was dark and somewhat creepy. I came to a junction at the end of the road, and the car slowed down to a crawl. I could smell the minty chewing gum that came from the mouth of my uncle who was seated behind me in the same driver's seat. I was about nine years old at that time, maybe even younger. I was on my uncle's laps at that time, with his foot on the gas pedal while I steered the wheel of his car in the middle of the night. We were breaking the law and we both knew it, but it's not like it was stopping my uncle from taking me out for a joy ride. I was small enough to fit in between his laps and the steering wheel, and I remember crawling over from the passenger seat to take over control of the vehicle. We were at that little junction in the middle of the night when he told me the first lesson in driving ever. He told me to always look in both directions at any junctions, and to tell if there are cars coming at night would be to see if the road lights up in front of you or not. I took a peek at both directions and then carefully turned the steering wheel. The car moved forward, and that was the very first time that I drove a car.

*

I was on my way out on Friday afternoon when my mother reminded me about Fathers' Day being around the corner. This isn't the Father's Day that we commonly know of, but Fathers' Day in Taiwan where we celebrate it on the 8th of August instead. Phonetically, the number eight sounds like the word "father", which is why the 8th of August is the day that the Taiwanese celebrates Fathers' day. Every year, my mother would remind me to send a text message or make a phone call to two people in Taiwan, namely my father and my uncle. My father for obvious reasons of course, because he is my father by blood. However, my uncle is kind of like that other father when my real father wasn't around. He is the husband of my mother's first elder sister, and they've never had any children before. So while my parents were busy taking care of business, they'd be the ones to take care of my sister and I while we were young. We all lived under the same roof in Taiwan, and they've been treating us like their children ever since then, and my parents were fine with it naturally. Then the inevitable came when my family had to move to Singapore, and it felt almost like being torn away from your own parents, only you were being torn away by your own parents - trippy, I know.

Anyway, my mother was having her lunch when she told me about it. I had almost forgotten about it at that time, and told her to remind me again when the day comes rolling along. She told me that it'd be OK if I send the text message in English, and I started nodding my head the way you would when somebody constantly reminds you of the same thing over and over again. Amidst her chewing, she told me about how this year is particularly different from all the other years because, well, it could be my uncle's last. I stopped trying to stuff the heel of my foot into my shoes at that point in time, and I just kinda stared at the floor for a moment there. I didn't want to show much emotions in front of my mother, and I merely brushed off the comment and said that I knew what she was talking about. For some reason, it has been a thought at the back of my mind that never actually came through amidst all the other thoughts. I mean, I knew that my uncle contracted cancer some time last year, as benign as it was when it was first discovered. As mentioned in my blog entry at that time, my uncle refused the scientific treatments and opted for a more traditional one. I was violently against the idea of that at first, but I've grown to accept that it is his life and his choice to make.

Nobody has spoken much about it ever since then, save for the time when my aunt called from Taiwan telling us that she'd be pulling out all the phone lines at home after ten o'clock as she didn't want the sound of the phones ringing to wake my uncle who needed much rest. From then, it has been small talks on the telephone between my mother and my aunt, and then the occasional phone call from my uncle. Just this afternoon, he called to ask about webcams and what applications to run in order to use them. My uncle is tech-savvy, and he learned the computer all by himself - something which I haven't actually seen amongst the adult members of the family thus far. Anyway, other than that, I seldom ever heard about any developments with my uncle and his illness, though I cannot blame my mother or my aunt for not telling me. I suppose in a way, I didn't exactly want an update on the situation either, and that little reminder from my mother to send that text message because this year could be his last, that was as far as I'd like to go with updates. It was enough to inform me on his conditions, though he did sound OK on the phone just earlier. So I put on my shoes and said goodbye to my mother, and then took the lift that sunk down through the shaft like my heavy heart.

*

It's cruel how everybody dies right, it's just so cruel sometimes. This isn't like a trip to Buffalo because I am supposed to come back at the very end of it. It isn't even that long a trip, because I'd probably be contactable throughout my stay there, with video conference no less. Death doesn't do technology very well, and it certainly doesn't even do snail mail either. Death's absolute and death's finite scares me to no end at times, though I have grown to terms with its bleak presence. It gets easier with age most of the time, and you hold up pretty well until somebody close to heart goes away. I haven't got a great many of such people in my life just yet, but I know that that day is going to come when you start to hear people die out one by one. It is inevitable, you know, the way that life decides to work itself out on this cruel mathematical equation. When my grandparents died a couple of years ago, the news came to me in a bunch of different forms. I wasn't even old enough to remember anything when my maternal grandfather died. When my maternal grandmother died, I was playing some racing game on my computer, and went straight back to playing it after being told. My paternal grandfather died a few years ago, and I think I was on the computer as well. Life went on easily after the news broke, and that affected me deeply, how I was unmoved by the circumstances of things.

My explanation for that was because I have moved away for too long, and have since lost that emotional connection with anybody back home in Taiwan. I used to think that way of course, and would naturally assume anybody's death to be easier to deal with if I haven't had any interaction with that person for a long enough time. That was until Stanley died two years ago in April after he got involved in that car accident. I remember being told about his death, and I just sat there in my chair (in front of the computer again), completely bewildered. Even in its most drawn-out form, death hits you hard almost all the time. You want to think that you've had all the time in the world to prepare for it, that you've seen it coming from far away because it is a terminal illness. I think everybody wants to be at peace with the concept of death, but it is never easy to handle it when it comes, you know. It's not that I have personally experienced a lot of such things in life, and I do attribute it to the fact that I am not old enough to have gone through such things just yet. I mean, I live in a relatively peaceful country with no wars and not much violence to begin with. Death seems further than the moon to me. But sometimes, just sometimes, the moon pulls closer than usual, and it breaks through the clouds to shine down upon you with a cold glow.

We all begin like that, when we remember how it was like when someone in class first got a girlfriend or a boyfriend. We remember that smirk in that person's face when he or she told us about it, and then you start to feel jealous because your arms aren't thick enough to attract the girls yet, and your voice has yet to break. Then you come to a point in your life when the people around you start to get married, and then you start to receive invitations to their weddings. Then there's that point that follows when the people around you start to have children, accidentally or planned, and then the point would come when some of them would start to get divorced. As you grow older, the activities that the people around you engage in start to change along with it, and death is just one of those things that come along as a common activity for everybody around you. Sooner or later, the people around you are going to start to die, and you are going to hear about one of your friends dying from some other friend, who may very well not be around by the end of this year. We are all going to come to that point in our lives sooner or later when you live long enough, the period of time when all the people that you know start to die one after the other.

My grandmother is ninety-five years old - ninety-five! She was born when the century was barely out of its first decade! She was around in World War II, and she was probably in her thirties when that happened - I am not even twenty-five yet. She has been through a lot herself I am sure, known a lot of people in her time, and seen a lot of people she knew die. I'm not even sure if many of her friends are still alive today, and the only people that she know are probably her children, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren. She has lived for so long, that even her grandchildren are dying out one by one. Just last year, one of my cousins died, and she was there at the hospital with everybody else. Like an old veteran of death, my grandmother shed a surprisingly little amount of tears as eye-witnesses claimed, and she went straight back to being herself right after leaving the ward. My father is a lover of chicken drumsticks, and my grandmother loves saving those for him in the fridge. The first thing that my grandmother said when she left the hospital was this: so when are you going to drop by to pick up the chicken? I suppose that is the result of someone who has seen enough death in her lifetime. She doesn't brush it off, but she addresses it and moves on. I suppose no one reading this entry right now can say the same. After all, she has had ninety-five years to prepare for it.

Sooner or later, it'd come to a point when we start to delete names from our contact list because that person has moved on. You know, when you hear about a friend's death, what'd be the point to keep his or her phone number? It isn't even like a letter that he or she wrote to you, because a bunch of numbers has little to no sentimental value no matter how you try to argue for it. So you go to your cellphone and you scroll to his or her name to delete it, only to realize how disturbing it is that nowadays, it is so easy to delete someone from your life. In the past, the death of someone actually involved you going through the pages of your contact book, and then crossing that name out or putting some correction fluid over the name and number. It involved some effort, which is in contrast to how we just press a few buttons to delete a name. Perhaps in the future, the death of a friend or a family member would be made much easier by telecommunication companies. Your phone will automatically update and delete that person's name and number from your contact list without you having the need to do so at all. It'd become so much easier for you to move on in the future, because the deleting part would be done by a machine with wires running out of its body.

I don't want to see death like that, but at the same time I do not want to have to deal with it either. On one hand, you feel like you want to feel something, some emotion for the passing of somebody close to heart. However, on the other hand, all of us fear death, not so much about our death but how we are supposed to deal with it. Sometimes, it feels as if it is easier to deal if you just zone out and take away your emotions. You'd look like a robot at the funeral, but at least it'd be easier on your mind and soul. Yet, you don't want to lose the ability to break down, and you don't want to lose that ability to cry. Emotions are what make us human at times, and you want to feel - really feel sometimes. I agree with that, but at the same time I don't feel like I want to deal with my uncle's death. I mean, everybody dies, and that is going to come sooner or later. Still, I don't suppose I am like my grandmother just yet - I am not ready to deal and move on so easily. Everybody dies at the very end, and some people are going to have to deal with that for sure. I don't want to have to deal with that death, at least not right now. I don't think I am ready, I don't think I am prepared. At this point in time, I'd rather things to remain status quo and not go anywhere. He remains alive, he still sends pictures of my dog via e-mail, and he still calls to ask when I am going to Buffalo. Now is good, right now is great. Let's not go anywhere and remain the same.

But that's not going to happen, because death doesn't work that way. I think the fear of death has caused human beings to personify death. You know, the dark hooded man with a sickle, that scary black cloud that comes into your room to take your life away. I think about the day when the people left behind by my uncle are going to have to deal with his death, and I suppose that breaks my heart more than the actual death itself. Without her own children and just a dog as company, I truly worry for my aunt and how she is going to take it. I pictured her moving in with us in Singapore, but that seemed somewhat unrealistic and ridiculous. Perhaps my mother would move back to Taiwan for a few months, and I'd have to fend for myself for the time being. So many possibilities, and all of these thoughts occurred while I was taking the lift down to the first floor. Everybody dies, I repeated to myself, as if it was supposed to comfort me in some ways. However, as I went down to the MRT platform at the station, a sudden rush of emotions came over me when I remembered how cool my uncle has been to me throughout my childhood. In fact, much of my childhood has ben built around this very man, and he is someone that I truly respect with all my heart.

He was the uncle that taught me how to swim, and also the uncle that taught me the first magic trick. You know the whole thick separating trick that adults would do to scare children - he taught me that. Then he also taught me some card tricks one day, and I remember how he'd drive my sister and I out in the middle of the night for our "Big Adventure". He'd drive us to the middle of nowhere and pretend that the car engine has stopped. I'd be in the front seat while my sister would be in the back, and we'd be panicking for no reasons at all. All of a sudden, the windows would wind down automatically, or the rain wipers would suddenly be activated. As children, we naturally screamed our heads off, especially when he'd purposely park the car right in front of some old abandoned warehouse. With the window opened and the darkness of the warehouse seemingly crawling into the car, I was scared out of my mind at that point in time. In truth, though, I have no idea why I was scared of that. Perhaps it was just the atmosphere, or how my uncle would just scream for no apparent reasons at all just to scare the children. I secretly think that he got a kick out of all that, but that's what made him my one and only cool uncle - everybody else are just kind of boring really.

My sister soon grew out of going out on these adventures, and she probably figured it out soon enough. I probably figured it out too, but I enjoyed the thrill of it all anyway. It was like watching a horror movie I suppose, and we love watching it despite the fact that it isn't real. On one of those days, my uncle offered to give me the steering wheel while he took care of the accelerator and the breaks. My legs weren't long enough to reach those, so he'd offer his laps for me to sit on while I drove. That night, I drove a car out from our house for the very first time, and we actually drove around the neighborhood for a while before we went home. It was my very first driving lesson, and it was done illegally and before I even turned ten. I remember how my uncle would call my house in Singapore over the years, asking about when I'd get my driver's license. He wasn't pushing me to get it, but always joked about how interesting it would be for me to drive to the airport to pick him up. Over the years, that's what he'd always say on the phone to me, but that is exactly what I haven't done over the years.

It isn't so much about being lazy, but it is the fact that I haven't got the free time to invest in it at all. I understand that it is an essential skill, and something that I'd eventually need to master. Yet, because of how I was almost immediately forced into the army and then subsequently college, I was never really given enough time to learn driving. Some of us were willing to sacrifice school time for driving lessons, but I suppose I never actually found the need to do so, considering how driving to Orchard and taking the MRT that is below my condo now takes roughly the same amount of time. The need to drive never really came to me - until now. Seeing how my uncle could very well not see the next Fathers' Day, it suddenly dawned on me that I haven't got much time left to learn it. It'd be tight, but I suppose I'd be able to finish everything within three to four months after I return from Buffalo. That has been the plan all along, but there is a deadline now. I wonder if he'd be strong enough to visit Singapore by then, I wonder if I'd be able to pass in time. I wonder if I'd be able to fulfill his dream of having me pick him up at the airport. We are all running out of time somehow, and I just feel so helpless about it.

This long entry isn't so much about death though, but how we are all running out of time somehow. There isn't a good time for bad news, and there never will be. There will always be unfinished business, something that you've never done before. And as for me, I wish that I'd be able to drive him around when I do get the license, and hopefully he'd be there to see it for himself. It'd be interesting, I guess, from the kid that sat on his laps to the kid that sat in the driver's seat for real. It'd be something worthwhile, and now I am petrified that he will not see that happen. There is something else to look forward to now I suppose, when I come back from Buffalo. More than just seeing Neptina again, more than just seeing my friends and family again, it'd be to get a license twenty-four years after my very first driving lesson.