Fragility of Life

It's exactly a month since my phone beeped with the notification of Henry's passing. This morning, another very unexpected beep of my phone notifying the passing of Michael Lianson.

I only got to know Michael in the recent tour to Eastern Europe. I remember his first statement when we chatted for the very first time - "I know you because your company is doing a project in Tuaran". He was then the District Engineer of DID in Tuaran. I guess he was in his late thirties or at most early forties. A well built muscular man with a height above the average. It was only in the FB obituary that I discovered he was a rugby player. It was unthinkable that an apparently healthy man in his prime of life just suddenly died, apparently after a stroke. 

Our final encounter was exactly three months ago on 18 September 2018 when we parted way soon after our plane landed at KLIA.

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Sadly, another premature death too happened on 17 December 2018. Mohammas Adib Mohd Kassim, the fireman who was critically injured in a mob attack during last month's Seafield Sri Maha Mariamman Temple riots. At 24, his life was cut short so prematurely, just three days before he was to get married - a truly very heart wrenching incident.

"We stand on the edge of the abyss, across whose unknowable face we paint meaning so as to see into it. It is always there. But we're here too, and we are no less real than abyss. We are no less meaningful for being transient creatures caught up in something too big for us. There is still value to our lives. I've learnt that those things that are most fragile are also the most precious." 

Ovadya ben Malka. A Damaged Mirror.