Chapter 22: A Scar is a Healing

EVERY TIME I look at myself in the mirror, I see a man whose life has thrice been saved. I have come close to complete organ failure during pre-surgery chemotherapy, blood pressure skyrocketing and pulse rate plummeting at the same time. The seizure of fever is so overwhelming I shake the hospital bed. I contract a severe condition that nearly takes my life when I fall into in a diabetic ketoacidosis coma. I leave behind that life-altering condition after surgery, which itself has a fatality rate of 1:100; it is more risky and complicated than a multiple heart-bypass or removing a brain tumour. I keep repeating to anyone who listens: “I didn’t even think I could pray for this.” Especially the Diabetes Type-I.

Prayer, an overwhelming sense that I am, and remain, in the presence of God, has brought immeasurable reward. In the darkest and coldest of days, I walk in the White Light of God, the Warm Wind on my back. I have been brought to my knees, so I may learn to walk again.

I have come to see that my scars are not a sign of wounds that have been inflicted on me. My scars are signs of healing. I am sick. I am afraid I will die. And I am gifted with the blessed idea, “I can heal.” My self-esteem and sense of worth is now based entirely on how much I may freely give, not what I may acquire. I am richer every time I give. The more I love, the happier I am, the more palpable is the calming in the soul. It is more about atonement, and less about the sin. I am a person who has been saved. I am now an Instrument of God. I serve His purpose.

*****

“Going public”, telling family and friends about my condition, sharing it all with strangers on Facebook, through the posts about my thanksgiving journey, all of this has made life so much easier for me. There is no reason to feel ashamed because I am seriously ill, even if some bad habits have also contributed.

I choose not to impose my own lockdown. I take the view that I have survived so much, if a bad bout of flu is to take me, then so be it. I travel. Helen and I go to Thailand, and we find a lovely enclave of wooden houses, built on the platforms of environmental sustainability, only a short taxi-ride to the heart or Chiang Mai. It is the perfect place for us, and you can brew your own coffee any time between 6am and 10pm. The staff take a special interest in this Indian-Chinese couple, still a rare thing in parts of Southeast Asia. It always happens to Helen and I when we do SEA. The bonus is, the cook instinctively asks: “Is it spicy enough, sir?” And sir says. Don't call me “sir”, but some chilli padi would be lovely. Then, we head to the highlands for a bit of indulgence within a resort tucked into a hillside that you just don't want to leave, if the intention is to be spoiled.

Helen and I attend the December 2019 wedding of the son of a friend who goes back all the way to my Form Six years and beyond. Bhaskaran Nair is a co-student at Vanto Academy in Petaling Jaya, and we become the best of friends, new “sons” to one another's families. Bhaskaran, his wife and their two children migrate to Singapore before Helen and I pack our bags, two little boys in tow, for Sydney in 1990. Helen is especially excited about getting her hands painted with henna, in Bhaskaran's apartment, where a hand painter has come to attend to the ladies in the family, and Helen. I keep reminding myself, despite a still sensitive system, that this is the best decision we have made: My condition has taught me that “anything can happen tomorrow”, and I must not postpone the important things, like being with family and friends, keeping the connections warm, doing the things that enrichen me. Paying my respects to the elders in our extended families is very, very important to us. It has always been so, but it is particularly more of a filial duty now.

Helen and henna.

A key ingredient to how I feel is being able to say to all the people who are important to me that I am OK, I am healing, I will be OK, I have Helen looking after me, and God has blessed me. And to believe everything I say. It is my truth and I will turn my truth into my rock.

I head for KL on my own, leaving Helen with her family in Singapore. In KL, I reconnect with Christie Leo. We run around like bad boys when we are both journalists in the performing arts field, but we stop tending to the relationship over the years. I stay with Christie and his Mum, and catch up with his brother, the excellent musician, Simon Justin, who is also a good friend with whom I have written a couple of important chapters in my musical journey. Christie brings me to PC Shivadas, all grand and wise these days. “Shiv” was Group Editor of NST in my writing days. In all my years at NST, Shiv is the only editor who saw to it that I was promoted for my work.

John Emmanuel Fernandez, the doctor-surgeon to whom I first took the secret of my symptoms, is especially happy to see the cousin he knew was in serious trouble.

There is always someone's guitar to pick up at Backyard. Leslie’s home is like “a guitar in every room”. Freddie Fernandez, the president of the Musicians’ Union of Peninsular Malaysia at the time I am secretary, collects me a couple of times. One evening, we got to hear Frankie Tan, that inimitable folk singer-guitarist, and I play a few songs for Frankie's crowd as well.

  From left, after a 2019 dinner in KL, are
  Sheila, Lily and Shivadas, Christie and I.

My old pal from the earliest days at NST, Lim Siang Jin, who has helped immeasurably with the production of this “blook”, is a regular drop-in. One day, Jin, myself and Patrick Pillai, another colleague from NST (and a survivor himself), drive around Selangor, taking in the all too rarely seen beauty of little towns, fishing villages. It is on this trip that I first seriously broach the idea of this book, and Jin and Patrick are immediately encouraging.

The holiday is pure medicine for my soul. For Helen and I, it is the gift that will keep giving. But, we now have two homes, where the heart is. Ben and Sara are in Sydney. Having come home, we want to go back home. It is a very particular life of the migrant we have adopted.

In Sydney, Helen and Sara help me clear one of the bedrooms, to turn into my study. I set it up so I can begin recording my music and songs. I refer to the studio-study as the seat of Early Daze Studios. This is also where I will write most of Love is the Pill.

Full support from former NST colleagues: Lim Siang Jin
and Patrick Pillai, during the Selangor jaunt in January 2019.

We say people who can write, in words and music, create the wondrous in sculpture and paintings, are “gifted”. But, how often do we try to understand what that really means? Where does that “gift” come from? It’s taken the better part of a half-century for me to understand that gifts are for giving and sharing. So, I write this for you. I put my music on YouTube for you.

I have to look death in the face to see what living is all about. This then is the sum of my lessons, which I share with you. You can write your own guidebook. Everyone has a story.

*****

There is a beauty in Covid-19, the great leveller, that tells us the street-sweeper, the toilet-cleaner are just as vital to how we all move forward, as important as someone like Barack Obama. We are all important. I now also know I am special. And so are you, wherever you may be, whatever you may endure. Know this.

*****

This writing is a journey in itself. I have arrived at a point in my life at which I understand that faith is about accepting something you cannot see, and sometimes cannot even imagine. Faith is, among other things, accepting that the idea of transubstantiation is true. That’s what “blind faith” is all about.

Early Daze Productions, in my Oatley home.

And faith has its precious function. It leads us to hope. And we are sustained when hope suggests things can get better. Beyond faith, on which is borne hope, there is belief. Belief is knowing something, it is built on rock. Belief is born of the human experience, the terrestrial experience, the tangible. Everything from the sunset, to flowers, the fibonacci theory, the ability to create music, the magnificence of trees (the oldest things on our planet)... they all tell me of a divine design. I don’t understand it, and now I know I don’t need to understand it. It’s just “there”. Actually, it's “here”. Here. This is all I need to know.

The disease of conceit holds I first must understand before I accept. My mortality trumps my conceit. I do not serve my ego, and I am bigger, more full as a person.

*****

I know it is the here and now that matter most of all. The hereafter is not my destination, and I don't care whether or not it is the last station on the line. It is another human construct. What I do here is what it’s about. Every day is a blessing, another opportunity to embrace the beauty of living, and all the chances to do good that this one life gives all of us. We are nothing, bereft of purpose, if we do not live to make life a bit better, a bit easier, for another human being. This is the humaneness within every human being.

I see this every day in my Mother, Margarita de Cruz, who gave me a love that can never be measured. I am a de Cruz, “of the cross”. And I have been brought up as an Emmanuel, in the “House of God”. Among the Emmanuels, within the four walls of this House of God, I have seen that giving and sharing can be a way of life. I try to sow this every day, first of all in the family I cherish, which I have made with my wife, Helen, for the sake of our children, David, Ben, Sara.

*****

Born into love, I know I am loved deeply, without question. It is a blessing. And yet, the richness of my life is not a measure of how much I am loved, or the number of people who love me. Life is about loving. Life is about loving everybody else before we may smile at the mirror. Loving everybody else is why we can smile at the mirror.

We can love some people so fiercely, so powerfully, that we will fight our biggest battles to keep them from pain, to make their lives easier. Love is not an exchanging of gifts. Love is simply giving. That’s it. No questions asked.

I fight my cancer, I fight to live, first of all to save Helen and our children from the pain of watching me die. It is the same with my dear cousins, my uncles and aunties, my in-laws and my friends. God moves me to put their welfare and peace of mind ahead of mine, and it has come full circle to save me in return.

In surrender are we free. In giving are we enriched. In loving do we walk in that special light, feel that warmest of winds blow every day through our lives.

We must love. Love is the pill.

Helen bought this made-in-Victoria Cole Clark for my first post-op birthday, as soon as I was strong
enough to go about town testing out a few likely instruments.