but we come crashing back down

i found out that uncle joo didn't pass away because of the cancer. i mean of course it was the cancer, but technically, he died of an overdose. An Overdose Of Morphine. he would be fed one dose of morphine every six hours, to alleviate the pain from his cancer. one night just slightly before the six hour mark, aunty meh called up aunty lin to find out if she should feed him one more dose before he slept, lest he woke up in the middle of the night and disturbed ah ma. aunty lin didn't realise aunty meh would be spending the night there, therefore being able to be there if he woke up, so she said okay.

but he wouldn't wake up. rushed to the hospital, uncle joo was barely hanging on. he was kept at the hospital for observation. my mum said he left us a few hours later. i wasn't there, i was at home sleeping in bed. she said that was how she would have liked to go and that it was better it ended.

uncle joo has always been afraid of death, afraid of everything. he didn't go to the army because he was afraid. he wasn't successful because he was afraid. he couldn't hold a job because he was afraid. but when the time came, when he was drifting in and out of consciousness, maybe he wasn't so afraid anymore. maybe he felt grateful his drawn out battle with colon cancer was to end soon. so point is, cancer didn't kill my uncle. the morphine did, but maybe he's thankful for the lethal drip that did him in.