Bye bye uncle.

My uncle passed away yesterday afternoon after probably a long struggle with cancer which affected his brain and made him behaved like a child.

When I visited him in Seremban few weeks ago he was is such a sorry sight that it felt almost too unreal. He has always been this authoritative character in the family - firm, disciplined and respectable. I wouldn't say I know him very well but that's the impression I gathered from the Chinese New Year visits once a year.

When I saw him that day, he looked so dried up and old. His skin was wrinkly from the sudden lost of meat/fats and was lying on the bed wearing only a tee shirt and diapers with a tube coming out from within that was attached to what seem like a urine pack. He mumbles things like a 3 year old child and occasionally scold the people around him.

I was so taken aback by the sight that the whole visit actually seemed more intriguing than sad.

When we reviewed news that he passed away yesterday, the news did not hit me hard. I wonder if it is because of the distance or the fact that I'm getting my new iPhone hours after his death. In fact all I felt was indifference - just like when my another uncle passed away previously in 2006. (it took me months to feel the sadness set it but that's another long story...)

I felt a slight tinge of melancholy but I wonder if it's my uncle's death or the idea of death itself that makes me feel this way.

Talking about death, I like this phrase from Murakami's book. I wouldn't say that I don't understand the quote or where it is coming from but I wouldn't like the idea of dissecting my dead uncle.

“When people die, I think it’s so neat. … I wish I had a scalpel. I’d cut it open and look inside. Not the corpse … the lump of death. I’m sure there must be something like that. Something round and squishy, like a softball, with a hard little core of dead nerves. I want to take it out a dead person and cut it open and look inside. I always wonder what it’s like. Maybe it’s all hard, like toothpaste dried up inside the tube. That’s it, don’t you think? No, don’t answer. It’s squishy on the outside, and the deeper you go inside, the harder it gets. I want to cut open the skin and take out the squishy stuff, use a scalpel and some kind of spatula to get through it, and the closer you get to the center, the harder the squishy stuff gets, until you reach this tiny core. It’s sooo tiny, like a tiny ball bearing, and really hard. It must be like that, don’t you think?”
— May Kasahara (in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami)


Rest in peace uncle.