Remembering a departed friend ...

In a few days it'll be a friend's first anniversary of his passing on. For some reason I still kept his phone number on my mobile and his online handle on my Yahoo Messenger list. Sometimes I look at it and still half expect it to come on.

Kenny knew his time was almost up a few years ago, but he did not tell anyone about it except for my church pastor. He never gave any hint to us, and we sort of expected him to hang around forever. He was looking forward to going back to Teluk Intan to spend Chinese New Year with his family, but he passed on a week before that.

I sometimes think about him to get a better perspective of my own life. I think we sometimes spend our days as if they'll go on forever, but the reality is that they don't. It is when we realize that there will be an end that we get the courage to abandon what is not important and to embrace what is. Despite a life cut short, I know Kenny never regretted any single day of the last two years of his life, and I hope I am able to say the same at the end of every single day.

As a Christian, I'm glad to say for sure that he has gone to a better place, but a year on, the sorrow still lingers ...