There were nights when I'd lie in bed... and imagine what would happen if my parents were to wake up and find me dead in my bed one morning. Their shock and denial, their immense grief, the whole sad scene of the funeral and them getting used to me not being around after that. Even while I sometimes enjoyed the feeling of being loved and missed, their faces (in my imagination) always looked so devastatingly sad that I would find my pillow and cheeks wet with my own tears... I still remember choking and trying to keep myself from sobbing aloud so that nobody would know that I was crying from my wild imagination. Bah! I'm not surprised then, that Jordan Hill's song, "Remember Me This Way" struck such a chord with me during secondary school. Farewells were such a big thing for me back then (and they still are - I'm sentimental like that).
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Thankfully I dropped such imagination quite a bit after my schooling days. Perhaps, I had come to know Jesus as my Savior then; yes, I had encountered God's love - and so I did not dwell too much on the grimness of death or "self-victimizing" thoughts anymore. Neither did I need to stoke the fires of such sad, dying scenes in my imagination just because I wanted to feel loved and accepted. Or perhaps, I was too busy grieving over mum's death in 2001 to contemplate on my own. Whatever the cause, I just fell out of the habit of imagining my own death!
I guess, imagining your own death takes on a whole new dimension after you've said your marriage vows.
Today, before my husband retired for the night he told me, "Come, dear... let me hug and kiss you before I sleep..." And then he couldn't resist adding, "...Just in case I don't wake up tomorrow. We can never know what will happen tomorrow."
Of course, I teared. Subsequently, something else he said led me to randomly say this: "Imagine...how it would be like if you woke up one morning and found that I had gone... When you bend down to kiss me before you go off to work, my lips are all cold and my face is grey..." I went on to describe a similar situation that I had faced myself after mum died.
Thinking of my poor husband finding my hair-brush with a few of my dropped-out hairs still intertwined among its bristles... musing over my old-school-style spectacles... wondering what to do with my clothes... opening the fridge only to find my junkfood half-eaten... looking at the meat in the meat section of the freezer and realizing that I wouldn't be able to cook him nice meaty dinners any longer, etc. - I burst into more tears.
I felt worse (and cried even harder), when I saw Ben crying too.
Anyway, that's all for the drama overload. To summarize what happened in the end: Ben said that he wanted us to grow old together. Of course it was funnier and a lot more touching than I made it sound! X))
Morbid drama aside, I realized that it would actually be quite good for husbands/wives to occasionally confront themselves these questions: "What if he/she went to be with God tomorrow? Will I live on with regret or with the contentment that I have done all I could so that he/she would have at least left knowing that he/she has been truly loved despite all flaws? What are the little things and quirks I will miss of him/her? Etc." Give themselves a most truthful evaluation too. It would be even better if they could talk openly to their spouses about the questions... and morbid as it seems, place themselves in the imaginary occasion their spouses suddenly die; vice versa. I did find myself loving Ben more (after my imagination, um... went wild). Quirks and all. I know that I'd miss him dreadfully.
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