I don't know if it's the Seventh Month effect, but in the last week or so, I've known of four deaths. (FL my colleague said she also knew of the same number. And just as she said that, an SMS beeped my phone informing me of a new death.)
Just today, as I was flipping through ST, I decided to peruse the Obituary pages, something I very seldom do. I saw the name of the deceased and thought it looked really familiar. I looked down, saw the names of the mother and finally one of the sons, and realised that the deceased was the father of one of my youths. My heart started beating very fast, and I don't know why. I guess it was more like shock, because my youth had always talked about his father living an everyday-type of life - working, staying home, cracking lame jokes occasionally. Turns out the man collapsed in front of his wife during a conversation, from what is believed to be a heart attack.
I just returned from the wake. The youth's pretty mature, already 18. And he said one thing that I thought was so true: "I look at my dad's photo and I can't believe it's true." I totally agreed with him. I guess you can't believe it's true until you see the coffin go into the hole.
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Just before I left for the wake, I had to break some sad news to the family of another youth, who is on a programme for young offenders. I had to fail him on the programme because he was still highly at risk. The father sort of pleaded for me to help the boy out, by giving another chance and extending the programme instead of breaching it. I guess I would be doing a disservice to the boy if I didn't breach him, because he already was given many chances. Sigh, really don't know, it's hard to break news to parents. But it's harder to live on knowing that I would be doing a disservice to the boy! If he needs to be convicted in court to learn the seriousness of his crime, then I guess he needs to learn it the hard way...If not, he'll never learn...
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2 comments:
eh yah i've been noticing the 7th month effect for some time! :p
anyways your job sounds tough! do u have to go through such dilemmas all the time?? hope the parents can learn to accept and understand that it is actually for their son's own good!
hmm i sometimes do hv to go thru these dilemmas, cos not all the cases i handle are smoothsailing! but it teaches me a lot, so it's a good dilemma :)
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