Pre departure...

Packing, packing, packing... I spent hours packing and tidying up my place. As the minutes counted down till my departure tomorrow morning, my mind grew restless and agitated with thoughts. My eyes watered on several occasions, and I feel I am due for a long outpouring of tears again.

Am I making too much of a deal out of this trip? Am I being irrational, as someone suggested, and making the one year anniversary of mum's passing more difficult than it has to be? Brother doesn't seem to show much interest in the ceremony next week, except that I should buy offerings to offer on behalf of him and his family. 

But loss is so personal, as is the way we choose to commemorate our lost loved one. Nobody knows better than I do who I lost and what that loss means to me. Who are they to tell me how to feel? When is grief ever rational? 

The significance of this trip is compounded by the fact it falls one day short of the same trip I made last year straight after my graduation. The same trip, similar anxieties and sense of dread. And the same feeling of loneliness and abandonment. I cannot help it but my mind rewinds back to words exchanged that were between my ex and the promises that were made then. Empty, empty words that have no meaning now, that only sting and compound my grief when my mind rewinds back to the day exactly a year ago...

I cannot but be reminded of calling mum the eve I left last year... How weak and frail she sounded, and yet in her weakness I could still hear her excitement and anticipation of my return... How I flew home and visited the Tokyo tower and cried (there's a movie called: "Tokyo Tower: my mum and me, and sometimes my dad". A movie I've not dared to watch, even one year on.) 

How I entered her hospice room and wore my graduation cap and put on this brave smile and mask that I'm completely alright right till the end when in fact I was so afraid and hurt to see mum slip silently away... The way she gasped for breath, the way she held my hand, the warm I wiped her body clean as warmth slowly faded from it...

It was all a year ago... A year ago yet able still to make me break down, choke and cry. Loss, loss, loss... What else do I have left? Teddy Bears, notes to myself to remind myself to be strong, and memories that haunt my sleep and keep me awake... 

Sitting on the bank of the St. Laurent, the water is so tranquil... But beneath it all, is not a wave mounting? Behind the clouds, there's a summer storm brewing. I can feel it in the wind...