The Invisible (II)

When the invisible realm becomes visible, what should we do with what we have seen, when our powers of vision and understanding are imperfect and limited?

On the morning of October 16, 2012, the second day of the wake, an old friend AL drove me back to my flat at Jalan Batu at around two. I needed a lie-down very badly. There was a service later that evening. Many of Boon’s colleagues and ex-colleagues came to the wake to pay their respects during the lunch hour. The news had spread. He was very well-liked. There were a lot of people, and it was all rather overwhelming. Apart from me, one of Boon’s aunts (Auntie C), his mother and half-brother were at the parlour. I texted AL in the morning and was relieved when she said she could come and help out.

At the flat I asked AL if she wanted to rest too. She lay on Boon’s side of the bed, and both of us fell asleep. I had a strange dream where Boon was mad at me because I did not ask AL to change into a fresh set of clothes before she lay down on the bed. I did not see his face; he was a dark shadowy form and I saw him standing at the doorway of the flat, facing the corridor outside, and then he left in a huff. But in less than 2 minutes, he came back. I did not see him coming back inside, but I could sense that he did come back and that he was no longer upset. At this point I woke up.

Through half-open eyes still heavy with sleep, I looked at AL whose eyes were closed. I shook her arm.

“AL, AL, I had a dream about Boon. He came back here and he got really upset with me cos I let you sleep on the bed in your outside clothes. But he wasn’t mad for long.”

“Umm,” AL muttered.

I turned to the other side. Through the doorway of the bedroom, I could see the living room. I closed my eyes and napped for about ten or fifteen minutes more.

I saw a startlingly similar image to that of my dream two days later. We were at Mandai. It was the day after Boon’s cremation, October 18, 2012. A plastic box containing parts of bones and other brittle chalky bits was on the table. Beside it lay a hand hammer, chisel, and a point. We stood around the table, in a semi-circle; Auntie C, Boon’s mother, his half-brother, one of his uncles, and me. There was a man there from the stonemason. The undertaker had arranged for this man to be the one to conduct the ceremony of placing Boon’s ashes into the urn.

Someone made a comment about the bones being large. The stonemason man said this showed the person was not old. He then turned to Boon’s mother and said to her in Mandarin that after death, we become spirits. He took an iPad out and thrust it under Boon’s mother’s nose, saying, see this, see with your own eyes. It was video footage from security cameras in the crematorium, he said.

Even as I noticed the resemblance between the shadowy form that appeared on the screen of the iPad and what I saw in my dream a few days ago, I was enraged and appalled by what this man was doing and saying. I don’t know why but my reaction was to pray aloud at that very moment. In my journal entry about this incident, an entry that was also a letter addressed to Boon, I wrote:

“You have to make your way to God’s light, where you shall reside for eternity. This is why I was enraged by the stonemason’s conduct at the crematorium yesterday morning. The Holy Spirit rebuked him through me, through a prayer that states clearly that all of us who believe in the Lord God will return to Him after our earthly bodies are no longer inhabitable and that our spirits will be at home in heaven, not loitering around in crematorium spaces or anywhere on this earth.

For this reason the Holy Spirit instructed me to pray aloud, to pray this understanding for all [who were present in that room] to hear, to know without even the slightest shred of doubt, that your spirit, you, Boon, you are back in our Lord Father’s arms, peaceful, happier than you have ever been even when we were at our happiest together, because you are saved.

For this same reason I should take heart. I should stop looking over my shoulders. Looking in mirrors. Looking and searching for your presence in this flat. You have left. But you know what, I know you are watching over me . . .”

 

 

(to be continued)