WOW! Thanks Rev. Dr. A. R. Bernard for that wonderful word! Finally an enlightenment to some Christians. It doesn't mean that if you are not serving in the church ministry, you are 'unholy'. Some people are just not called to be in the church ministry but in the marketplace. Well, if everyone is in the church ministry, who then is going to be in the marketplace where most of the influence comes from? Felt so good after listening to that because someone used to tell me those kinda stuff. So yeah. Hope that person heard that wonderful word that was shared.

Anyways, the next post is going to be a story of a very nice lady which was also taken from my Lit worksheet=) hope you like it!

It was a little after I had my lunch when I heard the knock at the door. When I opened it, a polite man greeted me and passed me an envelope. Please collect the body within 24 hours, or it will be cremated. There was no room for shock.The whole week I had prepared myself for this. I did not let my hands tremble as I accepted the envelope. I told myself I was receiving something that was weightless.

The man left earlier than I expected. I did not like the idea that he felt it was only proper to leave me to in private. He did not understand that there was no grief. My son and I had not spoken to each other for many years. Unlike his mother, I had refused to visit him in prison. I would have opened the envelope right in front of the man if he had stayed. I would have done it calmly, and when I am done, I will look at him straight in the eyes and say thank you.

But the man would be mistaken if he had thought my actions were calm. Because calmness meant that I was placing my feelings under control. But as I have said, I had no more feelings anymore. It was not calmness, but numbness. Very early on I had decided that everything that was happening was as a result of fate. It was fate that would hold my son up like a puppet from a rope, and it was also fate that would move my hands, also like a puppet, to tear the edge of an envelope.

Inside the envelope was a letter. There was also my son's pink identity card. I put the letter to one side and stared hard at the I/C. So this was what a dead man looked like. There were shadows under his eyes. There was something far away in his expression, a face not prepared for the snap of the camera.

There was his name.

There was my name too. Separated from his by the word 'Bin'(1).

His race.

Date of birth.

Country of birth.

On the back, his I/C number.

Our home address.

But what absorbed me the most was a little hole that had been punched in his I/C. It was there to say that the I/C could no longer be used. To show someone an I/C like this, you would have to place your finger and thumb over the hole, praying that nobody would notice that you are holding something that has been damaged. I suddenly saw my son holding the I/C in this way, trying to pass himself off as someone who was still alive. It was just the sort of lying thing that I could expect from him. I imagined him doing it with that crooked smile on his face, the smile he
always used to convince us that he would change, that he was listening, that everything would turn out all right. And I became angry.

My anger turned towards the person who had punched the hole. I had seen the way a credit card is destroyed, with a big pair of scissors slicing it into two halves. Why couldn't they do the same with this I/C? Why this clean, straightforward hole? I felt my anger burn, first on my skin, through the flesh, like a droplet of acid, right into my bones. My son was no more. I saw a series of circles, perfect circles... the outline of a playground, the stone table under our block, the noose tightening around his neck, the shape of his mouth when he was still a baby, shrinking to the size of the hole. It is an opening through which I feel my body leaking, drop by drop, until the day I join my son on the other side.