hemangiosarcoma, glioblastoma, dealing with grief of a child and a pet
My dearest Bom,
Missing you every second …
every moment, every single day.
No words can express the emptiness in our hearts
As your EE wrote ….
A thousand words won’t bring you back , I know because I’ve tried
Neither will a thousand tears I know because I’ve cried
Miss you so much Hui-Hui. ❤️😇
God, please guard me against sorrow and do not allow grief to continue dragging me into misery. Give me strength and courage to face what is in front of me each and every day. I cannot hurry thee, Lord but please take me into your kingdom in your time so I can be reunited with those I lost.
Amen
My Bible had gathered dust.
Life had been good until August 2019 (last year). Family, people and things I love and taken for granted were taken away from me. I experienced grief, sorrow and pain so agonising and excruciating that no words can explain.
The grief was so unbearable that I often I wish I was dead.
God sent good people my way and through their fellowship, today is my second day of reading the Bible again after so many years, God spoke to me in a song.
No matter where we are in life, the Lord is our light and our strength. He watches over us and stands by our side. The powerful lyrics of ‘Be Thou My Vision‘ are the perfect reminder of His love and presence.
For a detailed meaning of this powerful song, please click this link.
AUGUST is month eight
8 regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture
1988 our baby Bom was to be born
that year of the golden dragon.
12 August 1988 was 3 days before her EDD
Intense pain and continuous pushing almost in vain
An exhausted mummy with oxygen to aid
Finally 1.30pm, Judith Yolanda Ngeaw Hui-Hui was born.
31 happy years
Bom was my second child
My closest, a child I spent the most time babysitting
Taro Fresh Cream Chiffon, our favorite cake.
12 August 2020
My baby would have turned 32
Instead, she will always be our 31-year-old baby forever
August my favorite month became my most painful month.
Today
That physical pain of childbirth was nothing compared to losing a child. Struggling with complicated grief is something I have to live with for life. Mentally telling myself to ‘grow my heart’ and make it bigger and bigger each day to fill my love and grief because grief is just love with no place to go.
Grief lasts as long as love lasts which is often forever. Painfully but patiently, I am waiting for Bom to hold out her hand to me and bring me over to her side so we can be together in a safe haven where there is no pain, no sorrow, no parting, and no death.
Nevetheless, I am mummy to three children, Joanne, Judith and Joel. Nothing will ever take that away from me.
It was Sunday, what a beautiful day! An autumn day of lovely sunshine.
Our garden looked warm and peaceful. There are fewer birds now since we made the decision to chop down eight Palm trees, some quite tall. Looking out my bedroom window, I missed the Tui (bird) I used to see most days on my tall Queen Palm. Now, I can see a bigger patch of a clear blue sky.
Along our back fence, a plant blooms with beautiful purple flowers. The plant was a gift from a friend six months ago. We cut some of those flowers for our Beloved Bom. The plant was given to us as a kind gesture for our loss. The many wreaths and bouquets, big and small have gone with her but this plant and another rose plant (given by another friend) were planted in our garden where flowers bloom.
‘Visiting Bom’…
View original post 142 more words
Silently missing both of you every moment.
Crying at times, a release of complicated grief.
Emotionally exhausted and drained.
Not able to touch you or feel your scents,
Till the day we meet again.
From Mummy to Toby and Bom.
Always loved, never forgotten, forever missed.
My heart is heavy
I wear no smiles
My eyes blurry
I see no light
Since that day
October 29, 2019
My dandelion flew away.
29 Dec 2018
You held on to my hand when I was little. I hugged on to your back as I rode on your motorbike to school each morning for a year and then you bought a car because my younger sister started school too. We missed you and love you always.
22 August 2019
Who would let go of their dearest pet dog of ten years, a true companion and best friend.
Toby was my baby. My hands were stroking him the whole night he passed.
We are not in control of when we come or leave this earth. We just have to let go.
29 October 2019
It makes no sense why a mother should bury her child. How could this be?
Judith (aka Bom) left us so suddenly and I held on to her hand until her soul left for heaven.
I am sad and grieving for my loved ones. I know there are many like me out there too, missing their loved ones forever. Grief doesn’t get any better in time. I am still living with a broken heart that still beats as life goes on.
To those who have lost their loved ones, I share a quote below:
Flashback, 2019 was a disastrous year for me and my family and all loved ones.
Then came 2020, a new year, new beginnings. I blogged about 2020 the year of the Rat hoping to make a start towards healing, living and be at peace again. Our grief and the missing of those we loved will last forever. Time does not lessen grief. There will be days where you may just be having a passing thought while other times the minute you opened your eyes, the realization that she will never come back brought tears, agony, and sorrow and made you withdrawn and that could last for days.
The ups and downs of grief are like swimmers swimming with the tides. At times, the incoming tide may flow calmly. At other times, it gushes in at you with full force.
Imagine you are having a dip or a swim at the beach and the incoming tide, calmly coming in. These calm days are when we could think of our beloved daughter, Bom with sweetness and reminiscence the times we shared and forever thankful she was born our daughter.
Contrary to this, the rough sea and incoming tides just keep pushing you out of proportion and you lose your balance in the water. You need to be calm not to panic but relax lying down in a backstroke position or stay still and keep your head above the waves. The moment you open your mouth, you swallow mouthfuls of seawater. Those times are times when we allowed grief to overtake us, swallowed us into depression, that we lost control of the present. Grieving for the dead and ignoring those alive is not healthy. Learn meditation to get out of this zone. (In reality, I am aware of this but hard to control and I am still learning.)
2020 Lunar New Year, the whole country (with Wunan first) was infected by Covid19 or Corona Virus. It spread far and wide. 26 March 2020, New Zealand closed its borders and started our lockdown. We were told to stay home, be safe and be kind. We could still take walks around the neighborhood for exercise, Look out for the teddy bears sitting on window sills. Just something to bring smiles for the young and old.
I would never have written all the facts and the dates and the whole medical record detailing the last month of my beloved daughter’s life if not for being in isolation. I searched, reflect and finally got the courage to write my findings.
It was hard to ‘open’ up but I just did, putting my thoughts into words, printed out and knowing where to go from here.
\
I was brought up in a Buddhist family that practice ancestors worship, prayed in temples and set up altars during Chinese New Year to pray to the Kitchen God or Moon cake festival to pray to the Moon.
Neil Armstrong landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. I was seven years old and as far as I remembered, we continued to ‘worshipped’ the moon till I was in my early teens.
I studied in a mission school and became a Christian (Anglican) against my family’s wishes. I was devoted then, memorized many verses in the bible. Growing up, life was good. As a teenager, I cried to my God and shared with Him my puppy loves. Nothing major happened. My grandmother and then my uncle died. I was sad but I just accepted that old people die and that was what the song said
View original post 352 more words
Grief is a pain that lasts forever.
It may not be a physical pain but it is an emotional pain inside your heart, the feeling that your heart is torn into pieces yet it continues to beat as life goes on. It is not a pain that could ease with a painkiller or any form of medication. It just stays with you every moment of your life. In bad days, you grieve as soon as you wake up till you go to bed at night. It doesn’t disappear when you sleep because the brain stays awake and you dream of your loved one and some nights you see the trauma of your loved one dying right in front of you.
You miss her more and more each passing day. Time does not heal, in fact, it makes the missing feeling stronger and knowing that she will never come back.
I believe that one can only be at peace once you have accepted your loss and do your best to live on with it. One day, I may be able to accept that Bom is gone but only when I get her the justice that she was gone sooner than she would have been with proper medical care. She could at least have spent some quality time with us during her end days but that was robbed from us due to the lack of specialist care she received at the hospital.
Before that, how does it sound to you that the company she worked for made her resign without going through all procedures to find out why a productive employee suddenly became so slacked in her work?
My beloved daughter suddenly passed away on 29 October 2019 after a short sickness. That was only six weeks after being made to resign. Losing her job must be a huge blow and stress for her. She lost her dignity and she deteriorated so quickly. Her death was totally unexpected. We knew she was terminal but being diagnosed on 4 October 2019 and died on 29 October 2019 was something we cannot accept. If she had been under specialist care to the very end, we would never have got a discharged certificate with her cause of death as “Patient died from a suspected hemorrhage while waiting for treatment”.
Five months later, we are still grieving badly. I had three children and they were all very close to each other. My daughter and my son lost their sister. It was terrible for my elder daughter, Jo. She lost her confidant, her friend, and only sister. I lost my baby girl and her father too lost his baby girl. This creative daughter of ours, our star just suddenly stopped shinning and disappeared into the dark clouds.
As we stay strong trying to heal from our loss, it doesn’t get any easier as the world fights Covid 19. Such an extraordinary and frightening pandemic. Limiting our movements and staying at home makes me miss my Bom more than ever.
Losing Bom was the ultimate tragedy.
Nothing can be more devastating.
Why is this happening to us?
Five months on, I have no answer to this.
On a positive note, I can only say to Bom, “thank you for being born my daughter”.
