The Daily Whine

Even animals experience loss. I am certain about this because this morning, as I stepped into the office, I noticed an unfamiliar cat sitting outside our gate, peering in but motionless. She reminded me of Big Head, a kitten we found lost in our compound a couple of days ago.
Big Head had been crying non-stop since last Friday. We couldn’t find the source of the crying, but we could hear it, and it was loud. Finally over the weekend, Memed and Dedy discovered the little one in our attic space. How it got there, we don’t know, but apparently, there were three kittens, and Big Head was the only one still crying.
When I first saw Big Head, he/she looked blind, with pus covering the eyes. It could hardly get around; it tried gallantly, but kept falling. And it couldn’t stop crying. I estimated the kitten was at most just 2 weeks old. Shahrum patched it up real good, cleaned the eyes so it could see again, but we just couldn’t get it to feed. The mom was nowhere to be seen, and we knew it was only going to be a matter of days before Big Head would die from starvation. Big Head was not a cute kitten, but it was in desperate need of care.
We put Big Head (I call it this because the head was disproportionately enormous compared to the malnourished body) in a cardboard carton so that at least it wouldn’t run into trouble. There are dogs next door, and this street is full of hungry cats. The least we could do for it was give it a chance. The next day, we brought a tiny blanket (made up of an old cushion cover from my home).
Initially, I had cause for optimism. Big Head seemed to respond  a little to our care. During the day, in particular, Memed’s daughter would play with it on the lawn and, I thought, it appeared mildly content. At least it stopped crying incessantly.
But it still wouldn’t drink the milk we put before it, and it started to shiver yesterday. Even Memed’s little girl looked glum.
So when I saw that cat outside our gate this morning, I knew Big Head had passed away. I asked Memed what happened. He said the kitten finally died last night. The mom actually came into our compound, looked inside its box, saw the body and left. She didn’t take it with her. But this view didn’t tally perfectly with what I thought was happening before me - that the mom couldn’t let go. Of course, there are further questions to complicate my own suspicions too. How could I be so sure this was the mom? And if it were really her, where had she been all this time while her baby was starving? But such questioning ultimately only says more about our own human values.
So when Shahrum (whose eyes clearly glistened) and Memed were digging up a hole in the lawn to bury Big Head, and we heard some meowing outside, a mere two feet away, just beyond the iron fence, I walked round to take a look. Sure enough, the mom was sitting by our garbage heap, making that barely audible, sad cry.

  Big Head in the state we found him

I can see clearly now

Big Head in slightly happier times

Even a child knows Big Head doesn’t have much further to go now

It looked like a peaceful passing

RIP

Strictly speaking, I’m not from Muar. My dad is. But I spent sufficient time growing up there to feel it’s at least my family’s hometown, even if it isn’t mine.

So this guy makes me so proud that I have a link to Muar.

(In case you have absolutely no idea what he’s going on about, don’t worry about it. Neither does my dad, and he’s from Muar.)

People come, and people go, but no matter how many times it
happens, watching good people leave never gets any easier. It’s
happened to me plenty before, and it’s about to yet again.

I know I don’t deal well with people leaving, because I start throwing hissy
fits. I feel it’s personal, it’s because I’m a bad manager, it’s because I’m
not doing enough. And no amount of saying it’s not personal makes me feel it
isn’t, because I’m arrogant that way. I think it’s impossible that I can’t turn
things around, that I can’t solve problems, that I can’t make  conditions
better — but it’s madness to think like that because time and again, people
leave. So it’s humbling, and bit by bit, you learn that what you do doesn’t
define choices. Your influence over others’ career decisions is as marginal as
the shadow cast by a midday sun.

I should be a lot better at dealing with goodbyes, having once spent the better
part of two years in a relationship that seemed to exist only in exotic departure
lounges from Baraja to Dulles. My anxiety is that I never see old faces again,
and the familiar dissolves into the strange. The trajectory of my life since
college brings this fear home — I left Baltimore fully expecting to see the
likes of Cody, Mike, Karen and Christi after summer. It’s been 7 years and
it’ll soon likely be 8. Although by no means living the nomadic existence I perhaps
once led, I still remain a career decision away from a permanent farewell to
every social circle I make.

And therein lies the sting. I know people leave for all sorts of reasons,
including to further their career ambitions. As I get older and see more and
more people flit in and out of my life, I become more and more tempted to
invest less and less in the next social relationship, because I grow ever
certain of its impermanence. At the same time, workplace relationships weigh
more and more because they increasingly become the only real relationships I form,
except that they are just as transient as the next.

This one shook me doubly hard. After the last three, I
thought I’d be numb to departures, but I think now that you don’t feel less,
you just learn to store it away better. I remember the day when I realized D
would leave, I felt an immense sense of shame that  we were powerless to keep hold of her. When G
left, I was gutted. When S went back home, I also felt hollow. But when Y told
me she was resigning, I went through every conceivable shade of anger and sadness, before I finally reconciled
myself to the fact (thanks to May’s sensible counsel, naturally). It’s true I
was particularly fond of Y; perhaps, as the boss put it to me, I had lost my
objectivity. Perhaps.

But you learn, and you cope. If you allow departures to
define your relationships as impermanent, and by doing so you thus stop
investing in them, you soon become an empty shell of a man. And no coach,
however talented, produces a prodigy when his heart isn’t in it. So I learn,
and so I cope.

People come, and people go. You wish them the best of luck
and you watch them move on. And then you, too, move on.

I had that dream last night where the anger was real, and the arm lashed out and hit May, except that I didn’t realize I had hit her, nor was I aware I was flailing about, and  afterwards my breath was heavy and my heart was racing, and I stared blankly into the darkness, and everything dissolved away quickly into that darkness, and I fell asleep again. And now all I remember is the anger.