What her friend says... (III)

It was but a fleeting moment of our lives, and it is amazing that in the short time that we have spent with Bee Hooi, she have affected us in ways that we never knew she could. Her passing away is so sudden, so unexpected and so cruel...

A void opens up in our hearts, of the emptiness at the loss of her presence. You never really realise that light, that color, that smile, that act until it is gone. Irrevocably gone. No words of comfort can fill the void of the loss. No amount of crying, of regret, of vengeance can make up for what we lost.

Friends, we are all in the Medical field. It is obvious that Bee Hooi would have thought all this out. Despite the risks, she decided to go on. True, she may not have considered dying, after all embolization is fairly safe. She must have struggled with the fact that she may have neurological deficit though. It must have been difficult to know that this procedure could leave you blind, or have loss of higher functions. It would not have been worthwhile to go through the embolization and return as a vegetable, or a disabled. Not for Bee Hooi.

We may think, that Bee Hooi should have planned better, well, you can plan all you want, but things may not turn out the way you want it to be or even the way you foresee. And to all who knew Bee Hooi, she was already planning on her life after returning from Paris. It had not been easy for her, to go through the embolization and crany alone in Paris, what more when she actually have hemianopia after the procedure. Could any of you have gone through it alone, without family? Would you have the courage to walk out on the streets of Paris with visual field defect? And yet in all her correspondence, she never did once show her fears, she didn't want any of us to feel helpless and sad. Bee Hooi is truly courageous. More than me at least.

All of us are now left to pick up the pieces from what she left us. Bits of memories, videos, pictures. And it would not be odd, to find things that reminds us of the fun, life loving, kind, beautiful, friendly person that we have come to love and cherish.

Dying is the easy part, it is the living that is hard. Many of us would have regretted not saying or doing so much with her. I think she would not fault any of us. As much as she can, we are her family at work. To think that she did so much at work, I can only say that she greatly enjoyed working with all of us. She didn't say her goodbyes, and we didn't said ours. But then again, she never really left. Not for me....

Dr Ho (26th March 2008)