it was all thaddeus yesterday and today. the tears i shed could fill a bowl, though minuscule compared to his loved ones.

yesterday after school 10 of us went to his wake at jalan girang. tz, timo, cheese, mchia, yy, derek, samsoh, ervin, zhiming and i. when we reached the first thing we did was to have a look at his coffin, where laid thaddeus, his face exposed through a transparent plastic panel. obviously, he looked freaky, with his eyes n lips closed, but his hair was nicely gelled, as usual. next to him were his favourite sunglasses, and above him was a picture of him alive and wearing his sunglasses. tz and timo had already started weeping. and at this point,

i joined in too.

i am afterall a very emotional person. i cry very easily. the sheer thought of someone as young as 17 just dying like that is quite an uncomfortable thought. and later i thought of his brother, parents, bennett, who was his cousin. it was this which made me cry, not because i knew him very well or wat. sure, i knew him, and vice versa, for we trained together before, be it pandan reservoir, turf city or macritchie. but we were never close. in fact none of the ri guys were really dat close to him, but it was the sheer tragedy of the whole issue which drove us to tears. we stood there at this coffin for about 10mins, while his father was trying to console us, telling us about thaddeus, when we were the ones who were supposed to console him. tz n timo especially cried real hard, while mchia n i were just crying mildly. after that we just hung around the area, looked at his photos, all this in silence, before going home.

his mass and cremation was today, which started at 4. this meant that we couldn't train if we wanted to go to his mass. so, we came up with the brilliant idea of training in the morning. this also meant that i had to wake up at 4.45am. so tz, cheese, timo, mchia n i did our easy run at 6.30 at ri, b4 changing quikly for flag raising.

(i want to talk about wat happened in between, but the focus here is thaddeus, so...)

after school the 5 of us took mr squek and mr slim car to the church of st francis xavier for the mass. at the mass we weeped on and off, whenever they talked about him we started tearing. it turns out that on the day he died, his family had a dinner appointment with the parish priest and thaddeus was supposed to cook beef stew, but he never made it. he cares a lot for his grand parents as well, always holding on to them when they walk. bennett's ( sec 1 crosser, thaddeus' cousin) first unsupervised-by parents trip to j8 was made with thaddeus. all this really show how good a person thaddeus was, which made me cry when i thought of this. btw, as pink was thaddeus' fav colour, we were instructed to turn up in pink. and it was a funeral. you would have thought we were there for some party.

after mass proper there was a recollection speech by his loved ones, which was cried through by most of us (tz, timo, mchia, me, cheese maybe). only ruiyong and kml didn't cry,but their eyes were swollen as well. they way his relatives kept talking about him just make me feel like crying, which we did. i always found it so sad to accept that thaddeus died so young and so good. it just didn't seem right. he haven't even enjoyed life yet.

after mass, we went to the mandai crematorium. the crying there was worse. i cried the hardest there, especialy the part where we had to say our final goodbye to thaddeus. almost everyone cried, even cheese. i just couldn't control myself. however i can tell his family was the hardest hit. his parents had to stand there and thank people for coming while their son was only 20 mins away from cremation. his brother just stood at his coffin, sharing his final moments with the corpse of his beloved brother.

after that, we had to proceed to the viewing room where we saw thaddeus being pushed into the cremation chamber. the crying there was terrible but there i controlled by tears better. the worst had passed for me, but not the rest, who cried harder than before.and just before he was pushed it, the whole room was full of crying sounds, people who were previously enploying poker faces suddenly started crying as well. it was a tragic sight, one which i will not forget in a hurry.

and at this point, i feel there is a need to mention bennett. bennett, as his cousin, had to help with the readings of various things. i believe at such a time, to be able to go up and speak without breaking down is something which requires a lot of guts. he didn't seem to cry much at all throughout, leading me to think that he was really strong. that was until after thaddeuswas cremated, when bennett finally broke into tears, after all the emotions that had been accumulated in him. i feel lots of pity for him, as he was after all thaddeus' cousin, a very close one at that. to see your cousin die like that must be really scary, even more so for his brother.

i finally understand how important life and family ties are. seeing how thaddeus lived his life fully, i feel saddened at such a loss to his family and friends, yet feel inspired in how i am to live my life for now on. he had a a great, abeit short, life. i have life, therefore i should live it to the fullest before it is also one day taken from me.