Today is my birthday

Today's my birthday, Happy Birthday to me.

Around the same time last year, I had a personal loss. My maternal grandmother passed away 3 days before my birthday. I spent my birthday in her funeral wake.

Tonight there is another loss. A friend of my eldest sister, also maybe a known friend to me, passed away late in the evening earlier on.

We were not sure if it is the same person who we think is that had died. But my heart goes out to his loved ones having to lose someone.

After discussing this piece of news (my eldest sister and my brother-in-law have already left for the hospital), we watched a really funny Taiwan variety show on TV. We laughed really hard.

At times like this, some people will say “still can laugh until like that”. I would probably be one of those people who think the same way, how can one still have the mood to be happy when such tragedies happened.

Having going through such tragedy personally, I can now say, we can.

It is possible laugh again, to carry on living, even when things happened, when someone is gone.

We all deal with our internal feelings differently. Some cry, some talk, some get angry, some laugh.

By laughing, we are not laughing at other people’s plight. Rather we laugh because we know we need to have the strength to carry on with our lives.

I think we laughed the most as a family during my grandmother’s wake. The kind of strength we found from the common sadness we felt for our loss of our beloved “Ah Ma” to the elated attachment that we still have each other left behind.

I await the soon to dawn morning, to hear from my eldest sister about the outcome…