I Swear You Will Be Fine

Dear Josh,

I recently had dinner with some lovely girlfriends. They have been so helpful throughout the last 15 months. I am especially grateful as they are relatively new friends and they have kindly taken me under their wings.

During dinner, the host’s son came to say hi. He is just a few years younger than you. Mum and son were semi-hugging each other while still conversing with us. It was very cute and actually not so common to see in Singapore especially. The culture here, as you know, is not very much into showing physical affection. I smiled to myself as I was watching them.

Later that night, I was thinking of the events of the day, and in particular, the witnessing of this exchange between the mother and son. She called him “darling” – again not so common in Singapore. I also call you “darling” quite often. The interesting thing to me was that I was not jealous looking at this. And this surprised me considerably.

I always thought of myself as quite a jealous person. I expected after your passing, that I would be even more jealous of various things. In particular, seeing other people’s sons. But that has not happened. I’m happy to see your friends advancing in life, and I’m happy seeing my friends’ children, especially seeing them being close to their Mums.

There was one incident very early after you passed. I was at a friend’s house and her son and girlfriend came and were cooking in the kitchen. I found that quite hard. But another friend very practically said to me, “So what are you going to do now? You can’t see anyone’s sons with their girlfriends?”. And that snapped me out of it.

I was thinking about this post in the middle of the night last night. And I was also wondering, what does make me jealous? And I realised it was when people talk about their children’s mental health problems as if it was the same as yours. Like a colleague said to me, not unkindly, about his son a few weeks after you passed. He was trying to empathise and relate to me. He said his son was in the same boat and suffering from depression. When I probed, the son had never seen a psychiatrist nor a psychologist. With further talking, I didn’t think he was actually suffering from depression. This is what I find hard. People assuming they knew what we went through, and what you went through. The whole landscape of mental health is so, so wide. And unfortunately, you were in the absolute extreme of the spectrum. I guess this is not really being jealous. Maybe more irritation at unknowingly minimising how you suffered.

Going back to the dinner with the girlfriends last week, I also realised how hard it would have been for me to do this when you were here. I did host dinners, but not frequently. And I was always worried about how it would impact you. Often, you would try so very hard to cope with it to keep me happy, but eventually you would text me with, “Are they going home soon?”.

I hope all these things that were so difficult for you physically on this earth no longer bother you. I also think it is you that allows me to be happy when I see other boys your age, and their interactions with their parents etc. So thank you for that too.

Love Mum