big wave morning

went to big wave beach on sunday, bunch of things on my mind lately... and witnessed the change from blue skies to thunderclouds. i fell asleep under a blazing sun, and when i woke up, this is what i saw:

well, things do change without warning.  life, innit...

sharing an entry i wrote a little time ago somewhere else. 

Something happened late last week that left me very saddened. A family friend, Adrienne, a bright and lovely young lady died from a car accident last Thursday. She was vacationing in Thailand at the time when she got hit by a car, and later died of head injuries.

Tragedy is always jolting. Massive devastations like the tsunami, Myanmar, Sichuan, are ones that remind me of our sheer insignificance. Personal tragedies remind me that we really don’t know if today is our last. Even though chances are, they’re not. But particularly, with the number of people we each come across in our lives, we really don’t know if this is the last time we’re seeing them. But both remind me that our time here, existing the way as we know it, is short and transient indeed.

So, why do bad things happen to good people? Why would somebody like Adrienne, who always had a great smile with her, leave us as she was stepping into the prime of her life? Where is she, is there life after death? These are the age-old questions, and by now I know there are a variety of answers based on one’s religious views and faith.

What bothered me in particular was that I had found out about the accident through random browsing on social networking. I haven’t quite figured out whether I should be thankful that we found out soon after the incident, and that at least our family could try to offer some support to her family. Or… I don’t even know the “or”. From glancing at her wall messages to realizing there was something wrong with all the “rest in peace” posts, and receiving a response from her friend that indeed Adrienne had passed away – it was a really, really strange and disturbing experience. Calling my parents to see if they had heard anything about this, they were as shocked as I was and could only hope there was a mistake of some sort. I held out some minuscule hope that it might be all one practical joke, despite it appearing more and more unlikely, until we heard back from her father the following day.

So, Adrienne’s profile, and the online group in her memory, created by her friends, lives on in cyberspace, at least for the foreseeable future. On one hand, it seems strange to be leaving messages for her on cyberspace. They are just bits of data stored on some server, aren’t they? At the same time, a tomb is but carved and etched rocks. They’re symbols and memories of varying kinds – they mean something when we see meaning in them.

I have yet to leave any message on either her profile and in her tribute group . I really don’t quite know what message to leave. I still felt compelled to write a little something in her memory. And I wonder to myself why – this note wouldn’t change anything. And I don’t think we need to be reminded to cherish our family and friends, we’ve heard that a thousand times. Or do we?

Perhaps it's sometimes better not to think too hard about reasons and what things are supposed to achieve. Because sometimes, we simply feel compelled to do things.

Adrienne, I hope you’re doing well, wherever you may be. You’ll be missed.