I’m feeling really sick to my stomach. Don’t know what’s wrong with me. It hurt so much I had to stop what I was doing and lay down for a bit and now I’m here. Feel’s like something’s churning up inside me and my head’s trying to mirror the motions. I hope I don’t have a virus or something.
Before all this, I was spending the night trying to organize my things. I just got home. Home-home. I’ve been unpacking my travel bags and I’ve just started pulling out the trinkets I’ve collected that remind me of special moments on the trip. Oddly, I brought home a lot of masks. It’s been tough trying to make space between the other knick-knacks I already have. There are a lot. Maybe too many because I’m a sentimental fool. But I love my miscellany and I can’t imagine ever letting it go. While putting my memories on the shelf and until now, I had something ringing clear in my head. I had just received an e-mail about my uncle in Malaysia who had just fallen off the stairs, broke his head and died. I don’t know how to respond to it and I don’t know how I’m feeling about it. We weren’t close but our interaction with each other was quite recent and it really shakes me up how real death is. He had sent me off at the airport when I was there last month. It was just me and him. I was running late so I had rushed out of the car when we arrived but he parked his car and found me afterwards. We had typical surface-level conversation while we walked around. Again, we weren’t close but I had lived and spent a lot of time with him everytime I was in Malaysia for the past three years. When I spotted a bookstore, I told him there was something I wanted to pick up. He started to follow me towards it and feeling guilty, I told him that he didn’t have to wait for me and I’d be fine on my own. He quickly took me on that offer and we exchanged quick goodbyes. It was casual. Even at the moment I thought it was too casual but I assured myself I’d see him soon. We always assume we’ll see people again. I thought Marshall was going to live forever. Getting that e-mail really just puts things in perspective. Like dying fruits in that Bacchus painting. Momento Mori, am I right? I don’t want to squander my time; I want to spend more of it with the people I love. But here I am, useless, in pain and unable to move. What kind of sick joke is this…