2nd November is the anniversary of the demise of my second child. 2006 is the 11th year since he left us in 1995. Mr Healer was only with us for 13 months. He could have gotten an I.C. is he is still alive today. ( Interestingly, 2nd November is also the birthday of my mum. what a coincidence!)

We have cherished our moments together( although short) . Only Fejj ( being the eldest) have seen him as the other boys only seen him on pictures and whatever video we had on him. Da Boys are fond of him as they know Mr. Healer is part of my family.

Mr. Healer was a charming kid, always smiling, cheerful but did not make a fuss of everything around him or what went through him. His visible features were his fair skin and golden hair. I didn't know how or why but I guess there were his special features. Everywhere that we went, everybody that saw him wanted to adopt him. I guess people were just complementing the way he looked.

How does one survive such an ordeal, especially parents? It was tough, I must admit. During the time of his demise, I was in a transition of moving to another country. I decided to move on with the post as I wanted to move on with my life. I couldn't bear going back to my rented place as vivid memories of him were just too deep to forget.

One of the beautiful things that I am really grateful of is the support of family and friends that we have, in dealing with the loss.

When Mr. Healer was diagnosed with a heart disease, I began to sense that I have already lost him 50%. Initially, I could not stop crying since it was shock to us. First question asked was why was this happening to us? That is so normal. I overcame that and decided to focus my energy of helping him get well.

As a busy working person, I didn't manage to take care of him much as since he was still a baby, my wife did most of the caring. However, while being hospitalised in Singapore, my wife was down with a cold and was not able to stay with him at his bedside. I volunteered to nurse him for a week. My life was at the ward during that time, feeding him, giving him a bathe, putting him to sleep, playing with him, basically giving him the joy and laughter like any father would do.

The moment of truth came and it was announced that Mr. Healer left us just a week after his heart surgery. We were lost for words. No words could expressed how we felt at that time. I felt as if the world had collapsed on me! I began to look for strength and seeing my wife looked hopeless, I decided to be strong and gave her the support that she needed at that time. I told her, just let him go and let him go in peace. We had our moments and we should be thankful to Almighty for all the blessings that He has given to us.

I looked back in retrospective! I said to myself, Thank you Almighty for giving me the opportunity to look after Mr. Healer for a week. I had my share of looking after him and that made me happy. I was given that blessing and I took it. Life is thus strange but I guess it was all HIKMAH from Almighty.

One of the beautiful things about Islam is the process of healing during bereavement. The tahlil sessions were meant for that. Imagine, if we were left to our own devices, we could have gone crazy. Yes, we had family and friends that talked to us and the tahlil sessions helped us heal.

I was soul searching too, at that time and I said, I need to look at the Quran and Hadith on what was written on losing a child. I was happy when I read that if parents of the child, with all their hearts ( redha) let go the child, the child would be waiting at the Garden on Heaven, for his parents. The child would be asked to enter Heaven by Almighty and three times, the child will say, I will not enter Heaven without my parents. I told my wife to read this book and asked her to stop crying. Our friends who saw us were surprised that we were not crying or looking sad when they visited us. Infact, they were the ones who cried when I told them this story.

Another thing that I did was to look for the 'chicken soup for the soul' series. I got one for parents. Great. I did bumped into a story written by a mother in the USA, who had gone through similar episode like we did. However, She lost her child within minutes of being born. At least, we had 13 months of joy with Mr. Healer. I emailled the lady and shared my story. She replied back ans said, we have angels up there looking after us. I smiled when I read her email. Therefore. we should always remember that there are worse people than us out there. Always, be thankful to what we have.

The other way of healing ourselves was the fact that we were counseled by Mr. Healer's pediatrician, Dr. Lim. We were happy to see her and ended us crying infront of her. I personnally felt good about it as I know she would understand the situation that we went through. She became a personal friend now and she has a pic of Mr. Healer in her office in RIPAS. Comments that she told us whenever parents came to her office, they would ask whether the baby in the picture, was hers? She said, coyly, oh! he was one of my patients.

Sharing this story, I hope, will give you one or two tips on how to survive such an ordeal.

Mr. Healer, we will always miss you and hope one day, we will be together again! Al-Fatiha! Amin!