I dread nights like these. 

Woke up from a dream of my mom retching, mixture of phlegm and blood spew out from her throat onto the sofa. 

My mind has mixed up the illness of my late father with my late mother's. But either way one of them was always sickly or dying in my dreams. It has never failed to strike fear into my sleeping mind. 

Wide awake, I looked at the time: 3:59am 

I'm used to receiving little compassion by now. I have heard some pretty insensitive and nasty remarks on the dying days of my father. I have come to accept that people can be pretty mean when it doesn't concern them, and worse when things do affect them. I have acknowledged and apologised to people who angrily sprouted words like "has your father died yet?" 

I have built such a wall of tolerance that can only come with tragic life experiences such as my own. Yes I am using the word "tragic" because I am still traumatised and haunted by the memories of their final days even after all these years. It'll be 5 years soon since mom. 

2.5 months since dad. 

I guess I came on here because I got tired from crying on nights like these. 

I miss you, dad. 

This article was written on 15th September 2020 at 4:13pm, I left it in draft all these times and thought I'd publish it. 

"

A few days ago I learnt that an old, let call him an acquaintance, has passed. Even though we had more interactions at different phases of our lives for him to just be a mere acquaintance, however, admittedly, the last time we spoke was 7 year ago, but I digress. 

I took the news surprisingly well, but the buildup of the shock came after and for the next three days, his death lingered on my mind for reasons unbeknownst to me. 

This was a man I met in my young adult life, whom I looked up to and admired, and perhaps even was a little infatuated with; then years later I met him again in my late twenties, a full grown adult at an incident that would have us be in each other's company frequently over a period of 3 months. At one point we were chatting on a daily basis. In my naive mind, perhaps I had once considered him a dear friend. But this was a person that has always been secretive about his personal life. 

No one I knew knew anything about him beyond what he did for work. He was good looking, charming, very active on social media, and a fairly well-networked kinda guy. But from my knowledge, I had never heard about or seen any of his family members, be it from his friend, co-workers or on his social media. Heck, for all the 15 years I've known him and knew of him, he never had a wife, gf, kids, or family; I didn't even know if he was heterosexual (he told me he wasn't gay 7 years ago but even that answer was kind of vague).

I went onto his Facebook and found more information of his untimely death but came up with nothing, then found a link to a "father" of his who posted about his passing and the wake that was hosted, by then the wake period was over. Now this wasn't even his real father (different surname) and I could see that this guy has adopted his "father's surname" in addition of his own in recent years. You know, like how Angelina Jolie-Pitt has her dual surname at the back.  

"

The article ended abruptly here. I guess I retracted into my own thoughts and lost the flow of the story-telling. If I remembered correctly, his death was on my mind for a week or two, longer than it should have bothered me but it did. So much that I found the need to pen down my thoughts. Which doesn't happen very often these days. The older I get the better I am at keeping my thoughts to myself.