my bro and i

One of the highlights of my current trip back to SG is my late night suppers with Bro. Above photo was taken when we joined Sunshine23 and her friends at Dragonfly in St James Power Station for a short hour and a half before heading to Geylang for some frog's legs porridge and beef hor fun (thick flat rice noodles in a tasty black bean gravy).

Over these suppers, Bro for the first time, opened up so much and shared with me his love life, his career plans, his finances, his observations and opinions on the various incidents and events surrounding us, his worries, and most importantly on something that's been bothering me for a long while because I never knew where he stood in this taboo topic and never dared ask - his feelings and thoughts on my Dad's passing and how he coped through the years.

I listened, shared with him my thoughts on the various issues he brought up, told him about my own internal struggle dealing with Dad's passing, gave him advice wherever I could as much as possible and offered him the kind of moral and emotional support a big sister ought to provide for her little brother.

The years of distance between us melted away as we bonded in those few hours of chatting. Bro has matured beyond my expectations. There were snippets of conversation (coupled with some of the observations I made in the last week in my interactions with him) that touched me and totally convinced me the boy has transformed into a man now:

"I didn't feel a thing when Dad left us - I was 13. The full impact of his passing hit me when I was about 17 - 18. It then took me a few years to fully come to terms with it. The self discovery that his death deprived me of a chance to ever know him at all (I wasn't close to him at all when young) totally crushed me. I couldn't forgive myself for the way I treated him when he was alive. But I realised everything happens for a reason - I derived something positive from the unfortunate incident. I learnt that NOTHING ELSE, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MY FAMILY WHICH IS YOU AND MUM AND I WILL DO ALL IT TAKES TO PROTECT AND TAKE CARE OF MY FAMILY."

Doesn't this sound familiar? It's similiar to what I wrote, in perhaps not exactly the same words, in various entries as I went through the same learning path over many many years.