Here today, gone tomorrow...

My grandfather used to say this, whenever we discussed death: "here today, gone tomorrow". Of course, in his broad Berkshire accent, it came out as "ere tudday, gone tumorra". But the meaning remains the same however it is rendered.

Today, I was reminded of just how absolute this seemingly trite observation can be. Being a Saturday, the day started off in a pleasant, relatively trouble-free way, with a nice late breakfast with Annie and our nephew at the Tun Jugah Food Court. I had something I haven't eaten for almost five years - Cantonese fried noodles: a plate-sized round pillow of crispy noodles with a pool of eggy, chickeny sauce in the middle into which the hard noodles slowly sink and become soft and wet. Ah, the childish pleasures of life!

Later on, I took our nephew off for a book hunt, firstly stopping off at the excellent MyBookstore.com and its neighbour Sinar. We didn't buy anything, it was just a pleasure to look and browse and remind ourselves that one of the greatest things about being alive is being able to read, and learn.

After this, off to the only second-hand bookstore I have encountered in Malaysia, Book Castle, on the Jalan Zaidi Adruce near the hospital. Lots of old paperbacks and hardbacks, but not arranged in any thematic order, forcing us to search through the whole lot to see any gems. My neck hurt from constantly bending down to look at the lower shelves. And, there was nothing I liked. Slightly miffed...

Then, on the way home, we received orders from the General (Annie, who we had earlier dropped at home) to get some bananas on the way home. Went to get the bananas, then decided to eat (the torrential rain having a big role in forcing our detour). Then, more orders from HQ diverted us to the BDC shopping centre near home where we went looking at books again, then got soaked to the skin running back to the car.

Then, finally, we drove home. Wet, tired from all that shopping and running. And me looking forward to enjoying the rest of the afternoon reading with a nice warm cup of tea. But it wasn't to be...

When we arrived home, Annie was fully dressed. Apparently, two of her students had been killed that day in a road accident and, as Annie was their teacher, we were to visit the homes of the dead boys to offer condolences. So, off we went in the driving rain, to the kampung area near Annie's school where the boys lived.

The first house was a pitifully simple place, bare walls with jungle at the back, full of people of all ages, mostly from the Iban group, which meant they were Christian. The dead boy was laid out in an immaculate wooden coffin with bright shining brass handles, surrounded by relatives and friends. There was a sudden up-swelling of wailing emotion, which always gets my eyes watering, but I controlled myself. We sat on the floor, and offered a small envelope with money to the mother, a local custom.

I remember noticing how peaceful and still the boy was, laying there with cotton-wool plugs in his nose, indicating a recent post-mortem. And I thought to myself that this young boy, killed the day after the end of school, was alive and running around just twenty four hours earlier. As Oscar Wilde once wrote, "those whom the Gods love, grow young".

After making our respectful exit, we drove a quarter mile up the road to the house of the other boy who had died. This next house was accessed by bouncing our way across a stream on a rickety wooden walkway. It had a similar sad tableau as the previous one, but there were more relatives and friends this time, old men smoking, the remains of food on the table outside the house, the same dark, simple bare interior of the house, hot, sweltering, crowds of brown-skinned youngsters on the floor, with another young boy laid out in a beautiful coffin as a centrepiece, below a faded picture of Christ.

At the feet of the coffin, a dark old man was tending a small brazier where a pungent wood was burning, sending a strong, musky smoke up to the ceiling. Later, Annie told me that this is to mask the smell of the corpse, and perhaps to ward off the flies. We stayed there for a respectful period, then gave the requisite envelope of money to the mother, who was oddly calm I thought, and left this second scene of sudden death.

Here today, gone tomorrow. What a way to finish off the day....