Better to have had and lost

I hate it when good people die. I hate it more when they're people I know... yes, even if I only talked to them once or twice.

Mr Ho was a math teacher in jc. He didn't teach my class, but he taught me, nonetheless. He'd always help you if you had a problem you couldn't do. If there was this particular trigonometry question that you just couldn't solve... you could just go up to him if he was teaching another of his students on the benches, and he'd teach you too.

There's this Chinese saying (I hope i've gotten it right): Yi Ri Wei Shi, Zong Shen Wei Fu. (If someone teaches you for a day, he's a father to you all your life.)

Perhaps it was this sense of "piety" that made me want to go for his funeral, even though I wasn't really a student in the classes he taught.

Thus.. I found myself in the awkward situation of standing in front of the funeral parlour, walking apprehensively up the steps, signing in the guestbook and standing in front of him.

It was strange... standing in front of his coffin, smelling the incense, hearing the foreign Buddhist chants coming from the small radio and looking at the closed coffin.

It was strange... seeing his picture in its frame. The picture didn't do him justice. His smile was stiff, formal, fake... almost plastic. His eyes didn't hold the same twinkle as they did before.

It was strange... seeing the blue short-sleeved shirt he used to wear, the black trousers.. the leather shoes, with socks stuffed into them, just placed neatly on the chair. The colour of the tie clashed with the outfit. He never wore ties in school. Except perhaps when we had to take photos for the school yearbook.

It was strange... not being able to feel his presence there, even though his clothes where there.

It was strange... being told to "say goodbye to Mr Ho", when he wasn't there to hear it. That's why I didn't say goodbye. There was only a prayer, uttered softly, that God would take care of his family, that He would be merciful to Mr Ho, that He would heal the hurt of his close-ones, his friends, his colleages, his students. That one day, we would all know why bad things happen to good people...

And a choking sense of regret.

I feel as though I've lost something, but I never really know what I've lost.

People say that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.

Would it have been better for me to never have had Mr Ho teach me anything at all than to be given a glimpse of what I have lost?