Musings from an Old Phone #4 / January 24, 2021 by Rachel Chin

30/11/2015

I see a vision of my late grandmother in her movement

The same loss of balance

Tipping backward, then leaning forward to steady herself as she takes a step,

Leaning on the wall for support

She's grown so thin.

When did she grow so thin

The pleading

Him pleading for her to eat, her pleading for him to stop, begging him to stop and just let her be

The frustration.

Her fist in the air pounding on an imaginary table

I can't. I can't. I can't.

Please. Just a little bit more

Please. Please

Glory be to the father

Snatch the white plastic bag from the ground

Retch, tears, her whole body quaking, coughing, retching

To the son and to the

Most people feel better after purging their stomachs

There's an end to the sickness

It'll get better

Soon

Later

Not for her

For her the spinning won't stop in a few days, won't stop in a few weeks

There is no after this

Retch, gulp the air, sip some water, retch, repeat, can't breathe

And it hits then

She's dying.

Right before our eyes

Streaks of saliva on the pillow she's been hugging to fight the pain

Where were we?

O my Jesus, forgive us our sins

Musings from an Old Phone #3 / December 8, 2020 by Rachel Chin

04/06/2017

Am I home

From my shared room to the ex-master bedroom to a shared bedroom in another country to my own bedroom in another flat to a couch back in the old flat.

I wonder about that.

Can someone who isn't homeless be home-less?

Is it where all my things are?

All my things are

Everywhere

Scattered over two cities

There's nowhere to put

Oh yeah, sure fine, yeah put it there, I say,

What I mean is yes, carve out a piece of your life so that I can wiggle my way into the cavity and make it my own

And I will latch on and stay here until I am kicked out, if I am kicked out, when I am kicked out.

Even when I return to my own country, to the house I grew up in, on the streets I played on,

There's that same implacable feeling that I can stay here until I am kicked out, if I am kicked out, when I am kicked out,

Because there is no room for me

Not since I "moved away," moved to the couch across the straits.

I am a guest in my own house.

My room is now my brother's.

Here are my brother's things, here is his smell, here are his clothes, his books, his hair gel, his laptop.

I'm only back for a weekend, I can take his old room that no one sleeps in.

No biggie.

Cross the hall in my towel to my cupboard in my-his room for my clothes.

Fall asleep on pillows I don't know in a room I don't recognise in the dark.

That everlasting back ache.

I can sleep anywhere now

I sleep anywhere

Anywhere

Musings from an Old Phone #2 / December 8, 2020 by Rachel Chin

25/10/2015 - 13:24

At first you can't process the new information. It feels like someone is telling you a story that isnt real. But they're getting emotional and you feel like you're getting emotional because of it, but you still don't quite believe it's real

After a while nothing feels real. It feels like every other Sunday. Or rather every other part of this Sunday is carrying on like nothing life-changing has happened and the disconnect is so huge that to you it's obvious, something so ridiculously horrible isn't real, can't be true and most of all, can't be happening to you.

Mechanical. The things you've been doing everyday for years, your daily routine, feels oddly out of place in this world. Your mind's not in it, and it feels like each limb has to be separately engaged to function.

You start to research - mostly to disprove the reality of the situation. And you think, all these other symptoms aren't present. So it could be something else.

Then you start to pray about it, just in case, and also because even if it isn't that serious, you think, it is serious. And the more you pray about it, the more you search for words, the more you have to think and verbalize in your heart what exactly you're praying for, the tears start brimming and then set themselves loose from your eyes, streaming down and you don't stop them because there's too many to stop. Maybe this is actually happening.

You start to think about how you will handle this, what you'll do and how you'll behave the next day when you have to see your friends or your colleagues. You start to think about how it'll change the way you behave, and you start to hate yourself because even now you're thinking about you. Selfish. It feels like by thinking about it, you're choreographing your public mask of grief. You force yourself to stop thinking about it, but at the back of the mind you continue to wonder whether you're capable of genuinely expressing grief.

You grab a taxi to head over to the hospital, and you wonder what the taxi driver is thinking as he's driving you and your cousins to the hospital.

You haven't told your nearest and dearest, but you tell a stranger, and you feel nothing.