Other People's Love Stories: All Dressed in White

She stands in the darkness, arms and legs poised, her rapid, shallow breathing betraying her anxiety.

Anxiety was better than tears, she decided. One hand reaches to smooth the ruffles of the wedding dress.

Come on, God, she says under her breath. I don't know why You're putting me through this, but You'd better see me through this.

Please?

The lights come on.

***************************************************

They were together for three years before he finally popped the question. She remembers it well - they were at the park where they had first met. He had walked ahead of her, which she thought a little rude, but her head suddenly lifts up as she hears him turn abruptly. She is shocked to see him on his knees.

He is stuttering his proposal youknowwe'vebeengoingoutforalongtimenowandIthinkwhat ImeantosayisthatIwantyoutoWillYouMarryMe? She brings her hands to her face, and nods vigorously, surprised by her tears.

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"I'm saying sorry in advance, 'cos this won't always go to plan..."

The music starts, and she is trying to keep time with her partner for their hip hop performance. Her body moves in memorised rhythm but her mind is a million miles away.

Her partner does not seem the least bit bothered. He is in his bridegroom vest, and dancing like he was the only one on stage.

They are dancing to Guy Sebastian's Art of Love (ft. Jordin Sparks), and it talks about the bliss and pain of relationships. The words of the song are knives which cut away at her heart, and her legs.


"... and we're all about giving up..."

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It was two weeks before the wedding when she gets the phone call.

He is stone cold as he speaks over the phone. I'm sorry, I'm calling off the wedding. I can't go through with this.

She is stunned. Sure, there were arguments about the venue, and who they were going to invite, but they could talk it through, surely...

Something snaps.

Why? What do you mean? she protests. What do you mean you can't go through with this? We've had everything planned - the invitations have been sent out and the venue booked, for fuck's sake!

I'm sorry, he fumbles. I'ma... I... uh...

I'm sorry.

Sorry?!! Sorry??! Sorry is not what you say to someone to call off a marriage! Sorry is what you say when you accidentally bump into someone or when you're going to be late to something. YOU DON'T FUCKING SAY SORRY WHEN YOU'RE CALLING YOUR FIANCEE TO CALL OFF THE WEDDING!

She drives over to his place, her mind racing faster than the car, and she almost kills two cyclists who scream profanities into her unhearing ears.

She races up the stairs to his place, and it is only after a few minutes of angry knocks that he lets her in.

Her arms are folded, and she storms in. He is silent while she unloads on him. Her heart's content is emptied of its discontent.

Her tears are hot, and her mascara trickles down as she seeks to understand his change of heart. He is a wall, and she does not understand where she had misplaced the key to the heart of someone she thought she knew.

His silence frustrates her increasingly, and she throws himself at him, her arms flailing. She didn't know what she was hoping to achieve. Maybe she could beat a reason out of him.

He is caught off guard by her sudden charge at him, and he reacts by pushing out, and she lands hard on the floor.

***************************************************

He picks her off the floor.

"Sometimes I'm going to miss, I'm still learning how to give..."

Her body launches into the chorus with sharp, angled turns, and her choreographed body quivers a little in the wedding dress, but betrays nothing.

***************************************************

Why? She asked a friend. Why is God doing this to me? 


Maybe, says her friend quietly, Maybe it's a chance for you to finally let go.


***************************************************


She stands before the thunderous applause of the crowd, and nods a tiny nod of acknowledgement. Her partner is lapping up the ovation of what he was convinced were new members of his self-established fan club, and gives a peace sign as they run off stage.

Her heart is beating in her ears. Her heart. Which scabbed over clumsily when he stabbed it in all the different places. She had pulled off a big scab today, and prayed that it would now begin to heal properly.  

... I'm gonna get it sometime, 'cause I'm still trying to learn 

Still learning (art of love)

Still learning (art of love)

Still learning (art of love)

The art of love. 

Not Florence Nightingale

"You've got to be tough as nails to be an Emergency Nurse," he says, recounting his time in Liverpool. "They're a special breed."

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"There was this one time there was this girl lying on the waiting room floor, right? Screaming hysterically. Everyone had come out with the trolley and were standing over her."

"Get up!" the Emergency Triage Nurse screamed at her, exasperated by how melodramatic this teenage girl was behaving.

"GET UP!" she yelled again. "I've just had my hernia operation and if you think I'm going to lift you up, you're fuckin' mistaken, so GET UP!"

The others around her lifted the girl up and threw her onto the trolley before they wheeled her into the department.

"We found out later that the young girl had this massive frontal lobe brain tumour when we scanned her head, and that was probably why she behaved the way she did. I went up and told the Emergency Triage Nurse about the result, and you know what she said?"

"Well," she just shrugged unapologetically, "the rest of them are fuckin' dickheads anyway."

He laughs while recounting the story.

"Tough as nails," he shakes his head. "You've just got to be tough as nails."

A Dog Named Pebbles

The maid is walking out with the urn in her hands. She is wailing inconsolably, indifferent to the annoyed stares of curious onlookers.

There are some things just worth crying for. Especially if they've been a part of your life for the past 17 years.

Not every one lives to be 119 years old. 

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Pebbles, when she was just a tiny stone

She remembers the time when Pebbles saved the house from fire. It was in their old house, where an altar sat facing the door.

One of the candles had slipped and caught fire.

Pebbles' keen sense of smell brought her to the fire, and she immediately yelped in panic, and the family rushed out to see what the commotion was about. They put out the fire just in time, and Pebbles was treated like a hero.

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Too cool for doggy school

There was a time when they had let Pebbles' fur get a little out of control...  Pebbles looked like it had a big white afro on its head and its body - a walking, yelping doggy cloud.

Her friends who came to visit often exclaimed "Wah, this dog lie down that time ah, like Persian rug ah!" or "Man, it's like a fluffy tissue box holder!"

Pebbles the tissue box and Lucky

******************************************

Pebbles loved her durians. They had just finished eating some one evening, and had thrown away the seeds into a basket. Pebbles duly rummaged into the bin for the seeds with bits of flesh remaining on them, but she didn't have them herself first.

She nudged the first piece to Lucky, their other dog, first. Because Pebbles is all about sharing.

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Doggy style

Pebbles had taken part in various competitions with Karen. Sure, she was not a pedigree to enter into the proper competitions, but little Karen didn't care.

She walked past the judges for the Most Cuddly Dog, and a collective "Awww..."  arose from the judges as little Karen doddered by, with a fluffy Pebbles clinging around her neck like a little baby.  They won that one, hands down.

*******************************************

"Come here, Pebbles!" the maid said, holding the bowl with the mid-sized folded papers in her hand. They were numbered from zero to nine, and Pebbles would pick a number, which the maid would quickly snatch before Pebbles could chew it, and then replaced it into the bowl.

Pebbles was right on four occasions, and Karen's grandmother and maid won up to a hundred and fifty dollars each time. Pebbles was good luck, it was.

*******************************************

To the Batkennel!

There was this other competition where they had dressed little Pebbles up in a Batman costume. It was cute beyond belief. But Pebbles was a shy dog. Instead of strutting proudly like a superhero dog should, it whimpered fearfully instead, its supertail between its superlegs.

Lucky was also in the competition, decked out in sunglasses, a beach shirt and a scarf around its neck, like a doggie Sophia Loren on a day at the beach. Lucky walked past the judges like it owned the place, and won first place while Pebbles came in second.

They went home and told everyone that Pebbles had won instead.

********************************************

This was a dinner routine - the maid would finish cooking dinner, and then lean down and say to Pebbles - "Pebbles, go get mama and nana."

Pebbles' four little feet would scurry to the bedrooms of Karen's mother and grandmother, and it would leap on their beds, its eyes looking intently with its mouth half open, its tongue half sticking out as it breathed heavily in anticipation. Karen's mother and grandmother would stop whatever they were doing and make their way to the dinner table.

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Karen had a pair of yellow and orange Garfield slippers which fascinated Pebbles no end.

Whenever little Karen wore those slippers around the house, Pebbles would snap at her ankles - trying to catch the cat that was pretending to be a pair of slippers.

Dog-napping

One night while little Karen was studying at the table in her bedroom, she felt something tugging at her feet. A telltale little puffy tail was visible from the edge of the table.

"Pebbles!" Karen scolded.

Pebbles caught Karen with its guilty puppy eyes, before running away into the living room. It stopped once it was at a safe distance, its doggy mind planning its next attack on the feline slippers.

*********************************************

"Ohh... My poor gou gou is dying," Karen tells me, looking twenty-eight but feeling all of five.

Pebbles was a grand seventeen years old, and age was catching up with her. She had lost her eyesight, and was going around being guided by her weakening sense of smell. She had lost her furry coat - her proud puffy coat - due to skin problems, and her worn out knees had lost their spring.

She had only enough energy to eat, and pace around the house a little before falling asleep again.

One day, Pebbles fell into a sleep she never woke up from.

They came home with her remains, the family weeping as if they had lost a child.

Now there is a vacuum in the little corner of the house - and of their hearts - which Pebbles made all her own, and only echoes of the familiar pitter-patter of feet which would come to call them to dinner.

Rest in peace, Pebbles. I'd like to believe all doggies do go to heaven.