Wall climbing

The pain in my muscles was excruciating. I felt like giving up, felt like letting go and just letting myself fall with gravity. It would have been an easy way out, just giving up and admit to myself I can't do it.

The pain made me break out in sweat all over. I felt like my arms were going to break, and that the fingers were going to snap. Altitude and gravity makes you feel so small an weak. One slip, and if I weren't safely secured to a rope which my friend held onto tightly,
I could have plummeted to my... downfall.

"I can't do it... I just can't do it..." I heard the weak self nag and echo in my head.

But I saw images of what happened at the hospital. I saw my sick mother lying there... I saw me crying because I was weak and afraid. "I can do it! I CAN do it!!"

And it was as If I found renewed strength from nowhere, as if the tiredness and soreness of my limbs and the scrapes and cuts of my skin and (slight) bleeding meant very little.

Before my eyes were images of moments with mum at the hospital. Those were truly testing times... Those were truly difficult times that were painful, truly painful (though not to forget, beautiful memories resulted from those times as well...)

I pulled myself up, reached further and hung on tighter despite the aches in my fingers and joints. I pushed myself to the limit, the way I was often pushed to the limit mentally over the past few years. And I made it to the top.

I screamed and cried out of excitement and a sense of achievement. I felt good to be alive, to be panting, sweating, aching. I felt alive!

And isn't it always like this? At the end of a long, tiring journey that is testing and trying, isn't it beautiful to let go and look back at where you came from and what difficulties you have overcome?

Absence

What overcame me? Why am I suddenly crying again? Such sadness again, triggered perhaps by unpacking a bag containing clothes and items I took back from home almost a month ago. Yes, been almost a month and the bag was just there on the floor, untouched. It was as if I was/am afraid to touch it, afraid of what emotions and memories (and tears...) may be drawn from opening it all...

I unpacked the bag. In it was mum's blanket, the one she used till the very last moment... In it was a cat cushion I bought her, which I gave her to use to keep the sores away... She also used it till the very end....

Four years ago, I took the blanket dad used to the very end. Now, I have that of mum. Four years later, dad's blanket is just a blanket I use often, one that is stained on one side with his blood, one that smells more of me than anything else... But the blanket will always be one that is special in my heart, that is so soft and gentle to the touch...

Tonight I also tidied my drawers and sorted through my old clothing. Seeing clothes mum bought me, or clothes I bought with mum was hard. Seeing clothes dad once wore, and which I took with me after he left, hurt more than I imagined. And perhaps with the fresh wound, I found myself wave in and weak again...

I picked up the phone and called the monk in Taiwan. It was the first time I called "home" since I left. I almost cried hearing the voices of home (there were other people at the monastery, all of whom I know...)

"I've been so sad and down..." I said. That is the only way I am and have been able to describe it. Sad. Down. Empty. Hurt. Distracted and confused.

The monk told me to watch those feelings, and reminded again that they will go. All the feelings will come and go. That much is certain. He told me to think of it this way: before I was in Canada and away from mum. Now it's more or less the same. She's away now, and you can think of her still, just not reach her. "Think of her when you want, and she's out there somewhere..."

I struggled hard to contain my years. Struggled so hard not to cry. And often the more you try to do that, the more you end up crying after you let go.

I hung up the phone, and steaks of tears flowed down. I could not help from crying. I still cannot help myself from crying...

The longing, the pain, the emptiness is so immense. So very immense...