Earlier this evening, at around 7:50 – 7:55 PM local time, my good friend of about 9 years since I knew him on the basketball court, has passed away at the age of just 23. I was with him and his family, along with other friends, throughout the afternoon, till he finally left us. It was a very sad time.

Ziyu always had a heart problem. Since he was young he had to undergo an operation that would leave him with a nagging heart problem throughout his life, though he never really made a big deal of it, even going so far as to play basketball competitively. After his initial operation, everything seemed to go smoothly, but he was probably to live with the possibility of a heart failure throughout his life. I never found out exactly what his heart problem was, but recently, his old ailment acted up once more last year.

He never had a close relationship with his dad, and thus he only told his mother. All along, his parents throughout his life had resisted attempts for him to undergo operations, for matters related to the heart in medical science are always delicate, but as his father was getting on in years, and their financial well-being was in doubt, and Ziyu was already maturing into adulthood, it was decided that a heart transplant would be best for him.

It turned out to be his deathbed.
 

Though the operation was undertaken by what the hospital claimed to be “the best doctor” they had available, the risks of an infection regarding such an operation were still high. Warned about them, Ziyu still undertook the operation, around 29th December last year. By the first week of January, it was expected that he would be moved out of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to a normal ward. But he was not. Yet the family told his closest friends nothing. That is, until today, when I learnt that he would not survive even the night.

Apparently, during the operation, he had gotten infected somewhere. The search had gone on for a long time, exactly how long I have no idea, but by the time they discovered that his liver had failed and his intestines had begun to rot, it was too late. When he had just finished his operation, he tended to move about a bit too much, and he was given medication to help calm him down and put him to sleep. It put him to sleep for good. Even when he was conscious, he could not speak properly, could not complain even if he had been in pain.

Food passed to him via an IV drip (or some other) had accumulated in his intestines, unable to be digested, and had most likely accelerated the infection process. Even if they had saved him now, it was a mere 5% chance that the operation would be successful. Even if he had survived the operation, he would live the rest of his life on machines, and prolong it only for a short while. It would be more suffering for him.
 

I had always put off the topic of death, believing that there would perhaps never come a time where I actually have to explain why I consider death to be superior to life. But today, once more I find myself coping with death, this time the first of my closer friends, and I feel compelled to say that, though he suffered for over a month, I am glad that he has passed on from this suffering.

To me, death is better than life. To live is to suffer, to go through much that never should have been, to exist is a pain. To die is to pass on into nothingness, to be free of pain and misery. Many of us live to suffer, even if most of you wish to refute that statement, or the one that death is a blessing and not a curse. I hold no ill will towards anyone with a different opinion from mine; if you believe that living is better, so be it. I, however, can only see sadness and misery in life. Existence is meaningless. You live only to die. Even when you leave your mark on the world when you die, what exactly do you take with you into nothingness? And even if there is another world, will you ever come back from it?
 

Ziyu however had a bright future. Though he came from the lower achelons of the educational system here, he fought against the system and rose through, going up from what is known as an Institute of Technical Education (for some, the acronym ITE is also known as a derogatory abbreviation for “It’s The End”) to polytechnic studies. He had in fact intended to even apply for university courses at a local university this year. Unfortunately, he never could make the attempt.

Ziyu fought till the end, when all hope had been truly lost. When I reached the hospital, the doctor had already informed us that all they were doing was to buy time for him. He never gave up till the end. I stood there, thinking to myself the times we shared and how much of a friend he was, sad that he was to leave us at such a young age, yet happy that he was to pass on. This is another reason though that why I would prefer to be dead than alive – I do not wish to see people I know go before me. How painful it is to see people go before you, each eased of pain and suffering, while you live on and watch them go. What more so if they are ones that you know or love.
 

Goodbye, Ziyu. You will be missed. I wished though, in all sincerity, I had gone before you did. Perhaps the old saying is true, that all good men die young. Maybe the bad men, like me, live on only to suffer worse, till we reach the point where William Shakespeare puts it as…”and the rest was silence.”

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