My Longkang

Bengbeng: How are you? I waited for you during the Chinese New Year to visit my home.

40-year-old mother of three : I have been so sadlah. Terlalu sedih ( too sad ) Bengbeng. My nephew he is in Form 5 this year. Every year around CNY is rice harvesting time. On the 4th day of the CNY, my mother, his nenek ( grandma ) was sick and needed to be sent to the hospital. MY nephew was staying with her to help her with the harvest. He wanted to send her but she mati-mati tidak mahu ( refused ) saying she prefers to die at home rather than to die alone in hospital.

Anyway my nephew went to get help or something but we will never really know. On the way over to his destination, a lone motorcyclist came to his side of the road and they collided. My nephew died on the spot. The road is too good Bengbeng..it is newly tarred, long and totally straight. This is not the first accident.

The ambulance came but when they saw he was already dead they left him there and explained that it was procedure and they called up the police. It was a terrible scene Bengbeng sob..sob..sob..his head was smashed in and his eyes were no longer there. The police perhaps when they saw the body was still warm and the blood from both victims intermingling and flowing didn’t put them into black body bags. They allowed my uncle with the help of the local villagers to do it.

We had to rush to the hospital after that, wait for potong-siasat-bedah ( perhaps she meant post-mortem ) and then as we have no money u know, we had to do it ourselves. We washed him, bathed him and tried to make him look presentable. Sob…sob…terlalu sedih..hati..mahu pecah.

Most of the shops in Sibu were closed..tauke tauke Cina masih raya dan mabuk ( Chinese shops were closed ) we finally found Farley Supermarket open. We bought a white shirt extra large. It was the only extra large white shirt left. sob–sob..nangis.

This next paragraph is heresay but probably true as had her information on the murdered boy in SMK Teknik, Bintulu. Both parties settled it. Both families had lost a life. But it was so needless. In this particular case, the family had no objection to fulfilling the wishes of their son’s religious commitments.

The point I want to make here is to be careful on the road. The problem is we not only hurt ourselves but we hurt others too. The second point is the situation if it is true shows how both families who had lost a son each could settle the case amicably. To some perhaps this post might be a little off-colour but even if it makes one reader especially the younger ones who don’t realize their mortality of how mortal they really are and become more more careful on the road, then this post is worth it!

Our sincere condolences.

By the way, according to this same source, the family of the boy murdered in SMK Teknik, Bintulu is having a better life now with the assistance of some government agencies.