I Swear You Will Be Fine

Dear Josh,

Whoo hoo! We have another Doctor in the family! Jess passed her finals. As we know now, everything fabulous is tainted with you not being physically here. Nevertheless, you proved to us that you were right there with us.

So we knew Jess was going to receive her results at 7pm Singapore time yesterday. She was, as expected, stressed and on pins all day. I asked her if I should be on the phone with her, but she wanted to be by herself.

I got home 30 minutes before the results were out. As usual, I went to your room and looked at your phone. And there were 3 iMessages- 1 to Shalini and 2 to me. It is truly amazing how you do this. It was as if you were telling me, “Yes Mum, I’m aware of the big moment coming”.

Even though Jess had worked super hard and was relatively confident with the exams, in our ridiculous nature, we were all stressed. Tun asked me if I wanted dinner, and I told her to wait until her results were out. So I sat down to continue watching “The Night Agent”, constantly watching the time on my phone as it inched towards 7pm.

At 7.02pm, Jess video-called our group chat (with you still in it) and shouted, “I’m a Doctor”. A second later, she broke down, and so did all of us. I have to say we’ve become experts and wiping away tears. But this time, it didn’t stop, and the call became a blubbering mess of sobs and tissues. Patta eventually said, “Clear up, clear up”, and we tried to move on, but of course with the very heavy weight that you were not physically there to celebrate with us. After all, you were the biggest advocate for Jess to go to London and to study medicine.

Minutes later, the call ended. I texted Jess to tell Shalini. I tried to imagine what you would have said and silently asked you for a sign. You truly would have been overjoyed. I resumed the show on Netflix. The scene had been of a family trying to escape. The daughter had escaped first and the scene I was now watching was her mother escaping and seeing her daughter. They were random characters – not the main ones. I thought I heard someone say “Jessie”. So I rewound 10 seconds and watched the scene again. And there it was, the Mother calling out to her daughter, “Jessie! Jessie”!!!

A couple of hours later, I retreated to my room to read. As I passed your room, I looked in. And there it was, the main light of your room constantly flashing. It was perfectly normal minutes before when Tun went down. So it must have happened just as I walked past. I remembered Shalini’s dream when you said, “Look out for flashing lights”! Tun came running up minutes later. While taking the dogs down, she had looked up at your room from outside and noticed the flashing lights. We both watched it in awe for a few minutes.

As my closest friends assured me, you were right there, watching the joyous news, and showing us you were right there too. Truly remarkable my darling. I lit a brand new scented candle in gratitude to you.

Thank you for watching over Jess. So much was her hard work and resilience. But I know you had a part to play in this too.

Love Mum