JOURNEY’S END

(for Mother, 31 October 1998)
To none is life given in freehold;
to all on lease - Lucretius

( I )
Must the end come
Always with pain?
The years shall exact their toll:
Age ravages
Cruel in its insidious demands
Sapping the ebbing qi
Occluding the channels to life
Until the last breath is expelled.
Must life be reduced
To this drag of bones?
Tired flesh, panted breath;
Till the qi which courses the veins
Drives the limbs, gives speech
Is stalled, impeded;
Till the last exhalation is stilled
The candle slowly dies.
Qi, or chi, means life force, which sustains life, flows through the meridian lines, in the
Chinese medical lexicon.

( II )
In the long, lonely corridor
We kept vigil -
Weary lids laboured to tame anxious hours
In this ward of incipient despair;
Curtained partitions separate communal agonies
Busy MOs and stressed nurses avoided our eyes
For other equal claims.
Words intrude, only silence endures
Only misty eyes glow
From heart to heart.
Coming home to familiar sounds,
You listened, but could not speak;
We grew into a new routine
Knowing the lease would soon expire.
You were torn
Between staying and departing
Between an earthly warmth
And an uncertain journey;
You could not pull away
Even as you dreamt of a cosmic reunion:
Paper mansions, Cadillacs -
worldly possessions you hoarded in flames
During Qing Ming
Year after year.
Abbreviation for Medical Officer
Festival of souls; in memory of departed ancestors, paper symbols of worldly possessions are
burned as offerings.

( III )
Every generation rediscovers Gautama’s flight
Every age conjures primeval doubts to bargain longevity;
Man dies alone -
Trapped in tired frames, amidst faint shadows.
All roads lead to a cul de sac -
Man dies alone
The flesh is mortal.
As we draw down the blinds,
The surviving continue on the journey:
Life need not be a fraud
We seek no barter for perpetuity -
Simple truths are eternal
We construct our own destiny
Sustain a human immortality
Even as the flesh decays and dies.
( IV )
Our final farewell --
A bordered obituary
A smiling image
Mandatory listing to inform the world -
A confucian obeisance of joss and incense;
We shall bear your ashes
To your reunion
Beyond the ken.

Mother, now that you are gone
Our world shall grow and change -
In separate beginnings
No longer bonded by your simple love.