SAD

Damn it im very sad.

I think as people get older, they tend to feel less for the things that they lose.

This is shown by how our parents love to mess with our things, and in the process, throw away things that are of no importance and no meaning TO THEM. Which, most of the time, can mean ALOT TO US.

I duno how many times ive heard of others crying like mad when their mother threw their one and only favourite blanket/blankie/bei bei/*any other mushy nicknames* away.

Mother's reason: Its old and smelly. I will get a new one for you.
OUR reason: NO I LIKE IT BECAUSE ITS OLD AND SMELLY.

But by then, its usually too late. They just love to test our limit of anger by making sure there is no chance of retrieving them back. Its either down in the rubbish chute, or thrown somewhere in the gurung guni's lorry. And then our parents smile behind our back, before we get attached to a new blanket and the process repeats again.

Don't they realise that when someone owns something for a long time, a blanket is no longer a 'blanket'. It has became a companion, something that accompanies us into sleep every night for god knows how many years. The tears that it dried, the times when it stayed with us for the sleepless nights, the salty-yet-unique smell it got from us.

Parents never seem to appreciate this special 'connection'.

I know this may sound pretty childish and naive and lame to some people. Good for you, because you don't feel the pain of losing something as much as i do. But bear with me, because I will now proceed to talk about something even more childish.

My mother din throw away my dearest blanket (sooner or later anyway, without my permission obviously). All these were just an introduction using blanket as a most common example. But she threw away some things of even more importance and meaning to me...

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Few of my childhood soft-toys (i call them bear-bear), which 2 of them was of really special meaning.

Ok I can hear you laughing. Go ahead and laugh.

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Laugh finish? Ok.

So yesterday i was searching for my spectacles for the NS checkup, and realised that one of the cabinet that stored 2 of my super size bear were empty. No I don't hug these soft-toys to sleep anymore, they are just kept inside the cabinets, but that doesnt mean they can be thrown away.

I became nervous and agitated, and as usual, my parents just act blur and say "duno leh, never throw anything wat". Ok good, so my bear-bear walked out of the cabinet and jumped into the rubbish chute.

One of it was the first bear I received from my parents. Almost 15 years ago. I can still remember vividly the scene at my old house at Yishun. I came home and my parents said they had a surprise for me. They told me to go into the room and see. So i went, and there it was, a round shape soft toy, pink in colour, resembling a pig or what i can no longer remember.

I will never forget the joy I felt, carrying it to the living room and sitting on my parents lap. Feeling like the most blessed kid in the whole wide world at that instant.

Its these memorable snapshots in your life that somehow caught a place in your heart and you never ever want to forget. Even if I ever have trouble remembering it, i will love to be able to see the soft-toy in 10,20,50,80 years time, before refreshing my memory about those childhood memories.

They probably have forgotten about the origin of the soft-toy when they thrown it away. They might have even forgotten that it was a gift from them to me when i was like 4 years old. Did they ever consider the special meaning it had for me?

And then I became paranoid and checked another cabinet for the smaller bear-bears I had. And I got another big blow. The one bear-bear that is of greatest meaning, the one that i will never want to lose, is gone. I searched the cabinet over and over and just couldnt find it. And I became freaking sad.

This isnt the first time my mother threw away our (me and my second brother) soft-toys. More than 6/7 years back, we carelessly threw the soft-toys on the floor, and when we got home from school, my parents threw them away. 2 of them were some McDonalds gift, some brown coloured bears. I no longer remember how they look (DAMN), i only know that we placed them on our bedtop when we were really young, because we really treasured them.

We cried like mad.

Imagining how they will be mix with smelly trash, thrown into the incinerator and cremated. Gone. Forever. Together with my memories of how they look like, other than "I had 2 brown McDonalds bears that me and my brother really liked".

But we were lucky, our favourite soft-toy, small, purple, rat/rabbit, with red dots on its butt was not thrown away. We had put it inside one of the pillow's casing, pretending that the pillow was pregnant. AHH THAT WAS F****** CHILDISH. But wth all kids were childish when they were young.

I duno why it became our 'favourite' soft-toy. It was actually my eldest brother's bdae present from his friend when he was in pri sch (he is now 26, count and you know how long ago it was). Maybe it was the cutest. Me and my second brother used to play 'role-playing' with these soft-toys and even give them names. (DAMN it was CUTE for kids to do that last time) We did that until we grew pretty big, more than 5 years back, before he got into many problems and we stopped talking to each other.

And ya you probably know what happened to the pillow and the purple bear. They are gone. I couldnt find them yesterday. I searched and searched, I just don't know where my mother have taken them to. She claimed that she didn't throw anything away when she 'helped' me to 'organise' my stuffs during cny. I am not trying to be mean, but is it a socially accepted trait for mothers to be INSISTENT about arranging their children stuffs, to the extent that we either take even longer time to locate our things or never get to see them again?

Sucks man. I couldn't even take a photograph or what. SUCKS. That bear was like the conglomeration/epitome/essence of my ENTIRE CHILDHOOD. WHERE IS IT NOW?

I am one that is really afraid of losing memory of the stages in my life. And we all know how unreliable our brain memory is. We label many things as "memorable", but do we really remember all these "memorable" memories? More than often, what we remember are those little things like "Me and my brother went to this little pond to catch fish", or "Me and my neighbours pushed each others around inside big television boxes". Not "a memorable outing to East Coast Park", or "a memorable shopping day at orchard road".

What if one day, I lost any of my loved ones, family or friends, it is these little things that is going to remind me of the memories we had together. The day you made me jumped for joy with just a simple soft-toy, the days we toyed around with these role-playing games using these bear-bear...

Now that they are gone, I can only rely on my memory.

Memories that I really don't want to lose.

I hope it lasts, until I die 80 years later.