Suddenly Silent and Still

Suddenly Silent and Still

Finding joy and meaning through illness

Nin Mok

© 2024 Nin Mok

Suddenly Silent and Still

First Edition, December 2024

Uplit Press, United Kingdom

https://uplitpress.co.uk/

Editing: UpLit Press

Cover Design: Nin Mok

Interior Formatting: UpLit Press

Suddenly Silent and Still is under copyright protection. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Printed in Adelaide, Australia. All rights reserved.

Disclaimer

The content in this book is based on my personal experiences and journey. It is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any decisions regarding your health.

Contents

Chapter

Prologue

1.Chaos Before the Storm

2.Befallen

3.Race Against Time

4.Bargaining with the Universe

5.Grasping at Straws

6.Choosing Life

7.Invisible Change

8.Lost Hope and Dashed Dreams

9.Mental Breakdown

10.Self Worth

11.Existential Crisis

12.Facing the Demon

13.Unhappy Anniversary

14.Gaining Momentum

15.Pain to Purpose

16.Search for Meaning

17.Powerful Perspectives

18.Acceptance

19.Parting Words

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Acknowledgements

About the Author

UpLitPress.co.uk

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Prologue

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

—William Shakespeare, playwright and poet

The pain of permanent separation and loss are quintessential human experiences. You may not have experienced that agony yet, but make no mistake—fate eventually pulls every name out of its hat.

I have no idea why I was certain my turn would come at the end of my life. I imagined myself being old and frail before discovering I had an incurable disease. I would then be afforded a moment of introspection before being shown the exit, like a happy-go-lucky partygoer who leaves when the music and fun are over. Never once did I imagine that I would have to stick around after the celebration for the long and arduous clean-up. Many of my beliefs, such as this one, turned out not to be true.

Another of my beliefs which was proven false was that there would be a warning before a life-changing disaster took place. Signs of an event that big were supposed to be hard to hide: the water receding into the ocean, wildlife fleeing in unprecedented numbers, people screaming; that kind of forewarning. Hiding a birthday cake from a child was a difficult enough feat, for goodness’ sake. I was flabbergasted that I did not see a tragedy of such magnitude coming. There was no inkling of impending doom. It materialised out of the blue and left everlasting, disastrous consequences in its wake. Mother Nature was unsympathetic that I was in the middle of something important. She interrupted anyway.

I experienced gut-wrenching grief. My resilience was broken down, reducing me from a prowling lioness to a frightened little possum. I changed to the point that I could not recognise myself. Nothing remained the same, not my temperament, capabilities, confidence, or dreams. I had to work with this woman I no longer knew to reclaim my life. She was often too defeated or consumed by grief to even bother trying. The path of loss differs for everyone, but the feelings experienced are similar: fear, sadness, worthlessness, longing, anxiety, and panic.

Motivational speakers and self-help books were rife in claiming that Happiness is a choice. I have come to recognise this messaging as toxic positivity. It was fine for people who were sick of their jobs or felt they were stuck in a rut. But for people like myself who were seriously grieving, who were most in need of happiness, the notion that happiness was a choice was condescending. It made me feel like I was grieving for too long, that I had become mopey and needed to snap out of it. It implied there was something wrong with me because I did not return to being happy after a few weeks of being sad.

Happiness was perhaps a choice if I was rushing home and got stuck in traffic or if the cork fell into my favourite wine bottle. Happiness was not a choice when I lost two major senses, hearing and balance, which snowballed into the loss of livelihood, connection, freedom, and myself. Happiness is a choice is insulting to people who have gone through serious grief. Try telling that to those who are terminally ill, or those who have waited nine months only to hold their stillborn baby, or those who have lost their spouse, limbs, mobility, minds, or entire fortunes.

Based on my lived experiences, I did not have a choice in how I reacted when tragedy blindsided and ambushed me. It felt similar to being swept away in a strong current. My emotions went wherever the turbulence took me. For a time, I was battered on boulders, grazed on sharp rocks, and swallowed a lot of water along the river of grief. It was a difficult and painful journey, but the river inevitably slowed at bends and eddies. At those moments, I had a choice: to scramble with all my might to the reedy banks and pull myself out or continue to drift with the current of sadness that would take me further away from a life I once knew and loved.

I never understood what my key strengths were until I was in my late thirties. They were not obvious nor easily translatable into a passion or career, such as painting, teaching, or some other talent. Not knowing what I was good at meant I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Long after I had grown up, I still didn’t know. Then, a boss I much respected said to me, I could drop you into any chaos and order would begin forming around you. He gestured concentric rings, a ripple that got bigger as it radiated outwards. Eureka. At the risk of sounding like a father searching for his kidnapped daughter, I had a very particular set of skills, skills that were innate and refined over a lengthy career. Those skills were bringing order to chaos.

I was employed for my skills under the guise of project management and executive leadership. My job was to rescue high-stakes projects, turn around problematic departments, and develop exemplary practices that were deployed organisation wide. After having fought fierce battles in the management arena, I can still state with conviction that my health tragedy was the most chaotic and complex situation I have ever dealt with. But, true to what my boss had observed, order began forming around my tragedy, and I grew to surpass it.

I couldn’t choose to be happy, but I could choose to seek happiness. I could stoke the flames of life back from a traumatised ember into a roaring fire and hope that the essence of joy reignited. There were no guarantees that it would reunite me with happiness, but I had to try for myself and my family. People cannot live in mourning forever. To live in that state diminishes the flames of life, and when the light goes out, so does life. I would have died—at least metaphorically—from a broken heart if I carried the heavy sorrow for any longer than I did.

My A Gong’s funeral was my first proper introduction to tragedy. I was twelve years old. Everyone was crying except my ama. She had been married to A Gong for over sixty years and still stood composed. A true matriarch, she comforted her children and grandchildren. Her hands were steady around our shoulders. It will be okay, she told us with an unquivering voice. Both my grandparents had witnessed the Great Depression and World War II, yet their mental health was resolute. It was only after I experienced my tragedy that I realised why my grandparents possessed rock-solid resilience. Their experiences had set them up with an accurate understanding of reality. They never expected too much or too little of life, and their expectations were spot on. That gave them the armour to withstand life’s cruel blows.

Suffering was the conjoined twin of painful experience. In hindsight, I suffered more than my pain. I suffered more than I needed to. My mental model of how the world worked had not adequately equipped me to deal with life’s harsh realities, mostly because it was incorrect, comprised of too many rainbows and not enough clouds. Finding myself suddenly silent and still prompted me to ask the big questions. Why me? What is the meaning of this senseless suffering? Who am I now? And more importantly, how do I scramble back to the banks, and do I even want to? By asking the right questions, I gained the wisdom to turn my situation around. I updated my worldviews and put an end to my suffering, despite the pain persisting.

Ama set the bar high when she let go of A Gong with dignity and grace. In dealing with my significant loss, I too learned that nothing was outside my capability to endure. It was a matter of hanging in there long enough to let life do what it did best.

Given enough time, life finds a way. Many philosophers throughout history have explored this profound statement. Life, under any conditions, regardless of how harsh, will find a way to survive against all odds. My instincts wanted me to live. They wanted me to engage richly with my surroundings. Grief and circumstance could only contain my will for so long before life found a way. I was not shackled to my grief forever, and you won’t be either. Given the opportunity to thrash around long enough in the deep end, everyone eventually learns to swim. Hang in there.

Support from my family was pivotal to my recovery, especially from Tom, my husband. He walked alongside me, ready to take over whenever I lacked the gumption to carry on. Without that safety net I would have lost my mind.

Besides taking care of me physically, Tom also supported my aspirations to write this book. His integrity is woven into every page. Tom could possibly be the only person in the world without a social media presence. He loathes performative platforms and what they stand for, the promotion of phony cultures that reward their users with validations for theatrics. Tom is a relationship-driven business executive whose success relies solely on his loyal customer’ word of mouth, and he has never spent a dime on marketing and advertising. He is a walking oxymoron: the righteous businessman. That makes him the ideal gatekeeper of this memoir to ensure the story is told with sincerity and never veers off into exaggeration.

Our children were also pivotal in my recovery story. Jet and Jade were five and three when I got ill. They don’t remember their healthy mother, the one who chased them through the parks, raced them to the car, and sang aloud, albeit out of tune. They just know this mother. The one who struggled to make it through the day. Jet and Jade constantly needing my help and attention made my recovery more challenging, but at the same time, they made my recovery possible. Without their constant pull for me to join in their antics, I would have remained in bed indefinitely, absent of the will to go on. At times, I wished I was single and still living with my parents. It would have been nice to have them dote on me while I was grieving and ill. In hindsight, I am glad I had Jet and Jade around. Not only because they nudged me along in my recovery, but because I got to hear their little voices in stereo before all sounds flattened.

This memoir captures my journey in dealing with untimely and significant irreversible loss and the lessons I learnt along the way. It is a tale of how I chose life, applied the tools and wisdom that appeared before me, corrected my worldviews, and reinstated order from a state of traumatic chaos. Through this journey, I encountered many teachers of life. They resided in the wisdom of elderly people, children’s untainted views, literature from thought leaders, uplifting stories of people who were in similar situations, and the merciless truths that nature tells. The immediate lesson was obvious: my situation had changed and so must I.

I wrote this memoir for both myself and others. Writing down thoughts is an effective way to extend memories. By putting ink to paper, the brain can begin to forget about it, be that the grocery list or a trauma. I prefer capturing and containing the terrifying memories that plague me between the pages of a book than having them continue to exist in my mind. Knowing that I have filed my story away in text, these troubled memories can fade. I will also leave my children with a tangible asset, a family blueprint, to get them through their own tough times ahead.

If you are going through a similar journey, I hope my discoveries can be of use to you. I apologise in advance for the heartbroken places this book will visit, but I promise, we will leave the dark tunnel behind together.

Chapter one

Chaos Before the Storm

Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.

—Anton Chekhov, playwright and short story writer

For the tenth time, get out from underneath there! Giggles and snorts continued as my two children turned the ironing board into a makeshift tent and monkey bars.

It’s raining, they cheered, reaching for the falling mist I sprayed onto the shirt for tomorrow’s crucial meeting. The department was finalising its annual budget, and I had to attend, fighting for every dollar for my office.

The iron is hot. Play somewhere else. My warnings went unheeded, taking a backseat to the fun. They crawled around and in between my legs. The youngest, Jade, stopped to sit on my warm feet, briefly resting her back against my shins. Her simple gesture made me hyper-aware that I said Not right now, Mummy is busy, more often than Okay, I’ll play with you. She sought a connection I struggled to give, overburdened with too many responsibilities and a packed schedule. I had no choice. I’m a working mum doing her best.

The ironing board bopped up and down under the weight of a swinging toddler, causing the iron to coast over the fabric like a jetski on the waves. I glared at my husband, Tom, his vacant eyes lost in space, his dust-speckled ankles marked by a day of laborious yard work. Do something. Take the children. I gave the kind of stare that burned, yet he remained zombified on the couch. He too appeared depleted and had no choice.

The long day had shortened my fuse. By early afternoon, I was fluent in frustration. After as much abuse as the ironing board could withstand, it crashed down onto the children, metal trusses clanking against their soft skulls. Laughter turned into wailing.

This serves you two right! I snapped, adrenaline rushing. Looking around for a place to put down my iron, I realised this could have been much worse had I not been holding it. Yanking both children by their arms, I pulled them to their feet.

Stop crying. Why are you crying when I already told you this would happen? I scolded, cleaning up the cut on our son’s forehead. Being taller than his sister, he bore the brunt of the accident. You chose this, I ranted, losing my composure. Amidst his tears, the snorts became relentless, softening my heart. Oh, Snortlepig. I pulled him in close, holding back my own exhausted tears. I held his shaking body until the crying subsided. Tom and I endeared Jet with the nickname Snortlepig, coined after a character in our favourite children’s book, Uno’s Garden, when he developed his distinctive tic.

Jet’s tic had surfaced at three and worsened when he started primary school. Throughout the day, he would make loud snorting sounds, resembling an abrupt snore, the intensity and frequency varying with his emotions. People quickly suggested, or rather judged, that he was stressed. Stressed about what? He was five years old. Perhaps they saw something about our family that we were blind to.

The ironing board commotion broke Tom’s trance, prompting him to get up and pursue the next chore. Startled into calmness, the children took over the empty couch and settled into a show. The brief respite allowed me to finish the ironing and Tom to start dinner.

Dinner was conversationless but far from commotionless. My attention was focused inward, planning meetings, deadlines and how to navigate office politics. Tom’s mind was preoccupied with ensuring the livelihood of the growing number of families under his charge in his latest business venture. The children watched television while they ate but soon became restless. They left the table to run around, dipping back to replenish mouthfuls before taking off again. Food crumbs scattered throughout the house where they ran. Neither one of us summoned them back to the table. There was no energy left for this battle.

I trudged into the kitchen to prepare tomorrow’s lunches while Tom washed up at a manic speed, willing the day to end.

There are ten thousand ten-minute chores to do, I muttered, cutting grapes in half to prevent choking hazards. It never ends.

I don’t do anything I enjoy anymore, Tom agreed, sighing. This arrangement is unsustainable.

Meanwhile, Jet and Jade raided the treat-filled pantry to their heart’s content. I didn’t mind. Time-pressed, I took every shortcut to their smiles, compensating them with too many treats, new toys, and other gimmicks. It distracted them from noticing I was not around enough and helped me not feel guilty about it. I ran their bath with extra bubbles. This outrageous foam mountain should do the trick, I thought, turning off the tap and leaving them to bathe themselves. They squealed