My legacy

My mom and dad will be going back to Hong Kong next Tuesday to attend the burial ceremony for my G-ma who passed away two mornings ago. I spent that night contemplating on her life and legacy and in that process shed a few streams of tears while I typed up my previous entry. My G-ma was just a speck of sand in an ocean of time and space, but in our family, she was the centre of the universe, the giant radiating glow where we all revolved around.

Various individuals of my family has wept and continue to do so as they try to fill in that sudden void. I have my own way of course and I don’t necessarily show it the way many others do. Mine come in spurts, moments reminded from a certain sound, smell, sight, breeze…

I surmise one day I would be taking a break from my long bike ride, watching the water of the southern Fraser Arm bop up and down and see a glimmer of the sunshine on its edges and peaks, then somehow remember a time when I was little, watching the little ripples in my little plastic swimming pool move about while my G-ma and my mom call out to me. That might make my eyes water a bit, but most of all, it will make me smile, take a deep breath, look out beyond the waves into the horizon, turn my head westward and wonder a bit before heading back on my route again.

Often, I think about my path in life and my future seem bleak at best. Then again, the far future is a fantasy that can only be thought grimly. Is it truly that bleak? It could be, but maybe I will strike my near future well and things might go better starting from that moment on. It’s possible of course, but is it likely?

At this moment in time, I find myself a bit of a watcher as if I am ‘watching over everyone’ but not doing anything to influence any of them. As if I am a god, watching over the people, my creations? There is a label for this, but I forgot what it was. Basically, every now and then, I wonder if everything I see, feel and interact with awhile I am awake or unconscious were all things I created in my head. Maybe the very being of myself, what I look like is all just my mind needing to put a visual identity to my existence.

It’s more plausible that everything, that all existence is just me. The struggles, the happiness, the aggravation and pleasure are all self-induced. Laura, Jon, Benny, Roger, Thomas, Edmond… They only exist because I exist. Once I am snuffed out, then the entire universe ceases to exist.

Indeed, this concept is not new. A few years ago, I read elsewhere that this was something that others have also thought about many years prior to me thinking about it. Then again, I started pondering on this concept when I was a kid, before I was a teenager in the 1980’s.

I would like to believe I am not alone in this universe, that I am not the thing, the being that must exist so others can exist with me or rather, that there are no others, but just me. It’s not scary and it’s not really that lonely either, especially if existence is like this.

A world of shattered mirrors
Each fragment, a piece of me
Each reflection, a piece of you