If Tomorrow Never Comes.

Katie Kirkpatrick is 21 and dying of terminal cancer. That's her boyfriend Nick, 23 waiting beside as always at every one of her long chemo sessions.

High-school sweethearts, he proposed and she accepted.

I often see those kungfu films where the hero/ heroine is dying yet the boyfriend/girlfriend still wants to marry her/him anyway. And i'd think it only exists in movies. Realistically, why do you want to marry someone who won't be there to spend the rest of your life with? End up a widow? Then remarry years later?  Buut....

If tomorrow never comes,

Will she know how much I loved her?
Did I try in every way?
To show her everyday
She's my only one.

She died 5 days after the wedding, 16 Jan 2005. A woman so frail and weak,  yet you can see the pure joy on her face in this last picture and in the earlier one where she's putting the finishing touches of her look.

I'm touched and thankful she got to experience love in her final moments. Which suddenly reminds me of the late Michael Jackson. How sad it is that he craved so much for love and acceptance (you can somehow figure from the lyrics of his songs) yet never did experienced it truely and life ended just like that for him.

If you could know when your death date is, would you like to know? 87% said no. I would want to know frankly. I'm not afraid of death,but i'm afraid of what i wouldn't be able to accomplish before death. If i would know, i would live fuller, love deeper and not mind about unimportant things like chasing the dollar, and climbing the corporate ladder.

But you cannot not be a planner either. You can't just live for the moment everyday. That's just a bummer. Having no aim, no goal in life. I am an organised planner. My holidays have an itinery to follow, my bank account should grow and not deplete, my calender is filled with schedules. Friends will especially know i'm a planner! Because i always make them FIX A DATE, i do not take "yeah,we should do it." or "let's see" or "let you know later." as answers. Because when those are accepted as answers, you pretty much know it will NEVER come.

Some people will think why am i so uptight. They tell me i should chill and relax. There's plenty of time. But that's not living life with a sense of urgency. That's not living like you are dying.Tomorrow is not guaranteed, we never know when life can be taken away from us so abruptly. I am not uptight about life. I CAN ditch my itinery and adapt to changes. Neither am i demanding and a dictator. I just dislike procastination.

Much as i like planning life, i also love living on the edge. Ironically, i love extreme sports. As you would already have known, i have bungee jumped, sky dived, shark dived and fed a tiger. I still haven't slept under an elephant yet. My mum always freak out when she knows i've done all these (which is why i tell her AFTER i've done it), she asks me "why do you risk your life like that?"

But that is exactly what life is about. Experiences.

I have had my near death experiences (not from the above said "dangerous" activities), and it has made my faith stronger and made me appreciate life better.

My family is the one who gets the worst side of me. I am guilty of being short tempered with them, i am guilty of taking them for granted. Out of your entire network of people, your family's words are words that mean alot. Words that can cut you like a sword, deeper than any wound. I've experienced that when my mum is angry with me, and through that i learnt that whatever i do can affect my family greater than it would affect anyone else.

Secondary school was the best of my growing years. I was afraid of compeitions because i was afraid of breaking a bone (saw many of that) or get disfigured. But my coach pushed me and made it compulsory to enter and i won 23 medals throughout those 4 years. I think i won because i was TOO terrified of being beaten up. If you had fear of life ending before you can accomplish things, you would just push ahead and achieve things.

Many people get so caught up with their work, their duties, their habits and routines that they often neglect the relationships around them. The friends that matter, the people who saw you through different points of life. What is your life purpose really? To me, it's relationships. It's touching people's lives, and making a difference, showing them what love is.

He showed me what is it like to love. It probably wasn't love at the beginning (i don't believe in loving someone over a short period of time), but he showed sincerity in hunting down that hospital i was in 14 months ago.We only just met and i wasn't responding to his emails, sms nor phone calls. Suddenly he was calling my house phone to find out what happened. Talk about persistence. Normally, any other guy would think "naaah..maybe she's not interested in me. Ok, move on."

He visited me every other day, bringing flowers, audio books and craft. Walking with me on hospital grounds and talking with me after hours (it's VERY boring in the hospital). After that incident, he walked beside me every single step of the way. Not behind and not in front like a chauvinistic man. He made me want to be a better lover, a better daughter, a better sister.

Humans are forgetful like goldfishes. Without jolts in life, we don't remember to appreciate things. It's like faith. When you don't experience a miracle, you forget that God exists. When the doctor told me i might have cancer, i was at peace. I didn't fret, i didn't panic. Because i knew i had lived life.My dad gave me the best experiences growing up (financially supporting the extreme sports and overseas education), i joined the competitions and taken all those pictures. What i saw however, was my mum tearing and my elder brother (with that tough exterior of mohawk and dark fashion) crying. Mother brought food to me (although i really quite like hospital food) and rushed home to cook for the rest. Dad was incessantly asking the doctors for more information. My elder brother brought his entire band to visit me (they sang and joked and brought me sunflowers and FHM), by the way i think flowers REALLY make someone recuperate faster. It takes away the gloom i think. As soon as the flowers start coming, the faster my fever subsided. Hmmm...i can't seem to recall what my younger brother did though. Haha!

All these reminded me to appreciate the people whom cared. Before it happened, i probably was more self-centered. I remember i had a friend who was hospitalised because of dengue. I didn't visit her because it felt inconvenient. Now i feel guilty, and i knew what it would have meant for me to have visited her. Although she probably don't need another person since she is popular, but i shouldn't have minded what it would have meant, but rather do something that i knew was right of me to.

So tell that someone that you Love,

Just what you're thinkin of...

If tomorrow never comes...