'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said that "Love is watching someone die"

Last weekend my brother told me how he went back to our old home and how he remarked that it felt 'unalive'. It's been almost a year since my mom took it upon herself and went away from that house.

To her it's been too full of sorrow and sadness. Especially since I moved out and my brother got married. Back when I was the only child she would sometimes casually tell me how she felt mistreated by father and grandmother. That sometimes the only thing that really kept her going was the thought of us, her kids.

I do, in a personal way, find the place too old, the walls too weak, or the lights too gloomy. It's the house where I spent a lot of my sickly days watching the sky from my bed in front of a big, sliding window.

But sometimes that house did feel alive. Times when I graduated, or when my auntie would come from Australia bringing in presents for everyone. Or the times when, in our most boring moments, we would enjoy the warm light of incandescent bulbs while our elder cousins would tell spooky stories, funny personal anecdotes, and outrageous tales. It's also alive during Christmas and birthdays, mine most especially.

I would oftentimes think, that given the money, I would order that old house teared down. Along with all the family memories that came with it. "How could I be so cruel?", you might say. Maybe I am. But maybe because it's wiser to bring down something that has served its purpose, and prolonging its life would be more of a danger than a benefit. Patching it up, its walls or the stories it bore witness to, might only make it look good for a moment, but not enough to remedy a rotting core.

Make no mistake, I still hold love for it. The cool air that you can always enjoy on the ground floor, and the sunny atmosphere of the second floor. You can witness a beautiful morning sunrise on the east, along with the handsome scent of the vast coffee plantations at the back. At dusk, you could rest your chin on the window and stare endlessly at the horizon decorated by the silhouttes of coconut trees of the western coffee plantations.

It's a weird thing when you begin calling a place 'home' is it not? The idea is so mundane yet so outstanding at the same time, like it's some sort of emotional need that in as much as man can survive longer without water, than he is without air.