DEATH, AMONG OTHER THINGS

Growing up, death was never a taboo topic in the house. My earliest encounter with death was that of my paternal grandmother when I was about 7, and that was it. I kind of learned that we'll never see her ever again and that was it. Of course later on, death did somehow effect me in a way, especially that of my maternal grandfather, which is most probably not helped by his reccuring appearance in my dreams at times.

Even these days, we joke about death a lot at home... like take this conversation I had with my mom about a few weeks ago, where she said that she'd rather go off and die somewhere and I told her that if she died, I'd kill her. Naturally, she laughed at this. Mom thinks I'm very funny sometimes.

For that reason, I was a bit surprised at the reaction I received for the Facebook status update I so stupidly put up without thinking (but tell me, who really thinks about what they're putting up, and how it will effect anyone?)

I had jokingly predicted a time of death for myself because I had used a word in a report that received raised eyebrows and a request to explain what my definition of the word was. Even in the cold room where we were seated, I felt my temperature rise, more out of annoyance at their inability to comprehend simple English than anything else, but I also feared my fate during the wrap up, where our little sessions throught the week would be summarised, and most probably something would be made into a big issue in the typical making a mountain out of the molehill fashion.

I was surprised that a friend asked about it in an email, colleagues at work were talking about it and started asking questions about what happened (how on earth did the whole company end up getting facebook accounts is beyond comprehension)some of the comments friends put up in response to my status and even the sister's boyfriend asked her what was up, and wanted to know if I was okay. I didn't expect talking about dying would have been taken so seriously. Of course, after talking to the sister about it, it kind of hit me that maybe some people are not very keen on talking so carelessly about death, just like how some of my friends and I realised that not everyone can handle being called something which they're not, for instance this friend of ours who totally flipped out and started sulking when someone asked her to stop being a cow (she was being very silly about something in the first place) whereas the rest of us in that gang would have just laughed it off.

I suppose this sort of serves as a life's lesson about how different we are in perceiving things sometimes. I don't think it will change the way I look at it... I will still call my sister 'monyet' (monkey) at times, and I will continue using the word die, but at least I now know that not everyone will look at it the same way.

Anyway, since we're on this topic, and I can view stuff from youtube from this machine, I leave you with this video of one of the songs I'm currently listening to: