Received, just now, the sad news that my brother's godfather, and long-time family friend, has just entered the final stages of thirteen years of on-and-off illness. What began as nasopharyngeal cancer turned into a series of medical complications quite beyond my power to detail, the last of which was an episode of choking during a bout of pneumonia which led to anoxia and brain damage. Went straight from Mass to the ICU (in SGH) where the family was gathered, and married up with Jiahao, who managed to steal away from the urology ward where he was on call. Mom pressganged him into accompanying me into the ward (only 2 people are allowed in at a time), where, still in his scrubs, he did a perfunctory, official-looking flip through the patient charts (Can you do that? I asked him. Apparently he can. I'm not sure if I was expecting something wise and wonderful like "Oh, how silly, they could fix everything by doing X", but no comments were forthcoming.)

No matter how obvious, the juxtaposition - hospital wards on Christmas Eve - is still a horrific one. There's no inoculation either, no way to not put the two things together: out there, people are celebrating; in here, someone is dying. The mind, our minds, are drawn by irony, hungry for meaning, and, unbidden, do the interlocking. No stopping them. The best one can do is not feel guilty, not be the fulcrum - things aren't all about you, the universe is unfolding as it should.