New Blog

Hello my dear beloved readers.... if there are any...lol there's a new blog on the site, it's called :SILENCE BROKEN and it recounts the struggles of young people within the Salvation Army here in Fiji. Click on the link, have a look and lemme know what you think:

Silence Broken Fiji

Fiji Idol - contestant 69

don't laugh

Reminiscence: **Words Unsaid**

This is an essay that i wrote for my LL114 assignment one:

There are moments in life that prepare you for the future; it could be many things, from a birthday or even a funeral. Strangely enough, it was the latter that did exactly that, a funeral made me realise how precious life is. If you’re wondering what that means then read on because mine is a story of many contradictions. I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. Here’s my story: it all begins with the day that my older brother became sick.

It was Diwali of 2005 and my father told my brothers and me that we would spend the day doing some work on the garden, pulling out weeds, cutting the grass and collecting the rubbish for disposal. By midday we were working at full swing and my brother, Jese was busy pulling up some unwanted bushes from the hedge. He must have been pulling very hard on the plants because the exertion caused a few blood cells in his lungs to burst, although he didn’t know this at all.

That night, Jese felt weak and cold, and because he was asthmatic, we made sure that he was warm and my parents gave him a massage before he went to bed. From then on, it all went down hill. Within 2 days he was unable to stand, having to crawl to the kitchen or even to the bathroom. My parents were alarmed and took him down to the Colonial Memorial Hospital. I was never close to my brother and took this news with some indifference.

Jese was immediately hospitalized and under constant watch. Day after day, he became even weaker, but there were times when he was strong enough to sit up and chat with us. The doctors constantly moved him around the hospital, sometimes changing wards after spending just two hours in a new wing. To me, it seemed that this constant moving around weakened him even more than the treatment could help, which was saying a lot because they were injecting very strong medicine into his system. My mother and my cousins had taken shifts to watch over him, both day and night. I was told to stay home and make sure that everything is prepared ready for my parents and siblings. In the whole time Jese was in hospital, I had only been in to visit may be three times and in those visits, I just stood by and watched as everyone else had a chance to talk with him and share their experiences. Finally, he was moved into the Sukuna Ward, where he was to spend his final days before he succumbed to a sleep that was to last forever.




Friday morning, and it was just a few days after the Diwali clean-up. Jese had spent 3 days in hospital. My father had promised me a gift for my birthday and said for me to wait until I found what I wanted. Looking around town, I found the perfect thing. It was an mp3 player that was on sale and cost only $70.00. He agreed to it and so we went into town, did some banking, bought some batteries and purchased my new mp3 player. The batteries were for Jese who wanted some fresh ones to replace the old ones in his cd player. It took us a good portion of the day to get all this done. We left town and made our way up to the hospital, where the unthinkable had happened. My brother Jese had died.

It happened around 2’o clock and that was the time that we were out hunting for my mp3 player. We parked the car outside the ward and walked in together, holding our new purchases, mine the mp3 player and dad carried the bag of batteries. The curtain to Jese’s room was drawn closed and as I walked in, the sight that greeted me was the last I had expected to see. Jese lay on his bed arms crossed across his abdomen and his face covered. My mother and younger were both crying and for that split second, I was speechless. I felt like I couldn’t breathe; I didn’t know whether to cry or to scream. I stood there shaking and then my mother tells me to hold my father’s hand because it looked like he was gonna fall over with shock.

Till this very day, I still carry that memory fresh in my mind. As I thought of it more and more, one thing keeps coming back to me. It was the thought that of everyone in my family, I never had a chance to say goodbye to him. My dad had his chance early in the morning as he left to bring mum home from the hospital. But I never did, in all the visits, every time I had the chance to, I didn’t get to say goodbye to my brother who I now realised loved me but in his own special way.

It was that day that set in motion events that lead me to where I am now. Things at home were never the same; I had to spend many nights lying on the floor next to my mother holding her hand whenever she went to sleep because she always had bad nightmares of that Friday. I handled my grief in many ways, crying myself to sleep at night, drinking my way through weekends letting the hangovers represent the pain I couldn’t feel inside. I felt empty.

When New Years came, I vowed to never leave words unsaid between me and anyone else I know and love. I can only hope to catch up with Jese when my turn comes round, so I can tell him everything that I could never say before. I promised myself that I would live my life to the fullest, never have regrets and do everything I possibly can to ensure that my family knows how much I love them. When I was accepted into the University of the South Pacific (USP) early last year, it was an achievement not only for me but also for Jese because it was his dream for me to complete my education with a tertiary degree, a dream he’d wasted when his chance came round.

The day that my brother died was the day that my life changed, physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally. I had to mature in many ways and it was often an unpleasant process. But I’m glad that I can move on from there and do my best to achieve the goals I set for myself in New Years. Two years on, I realise that I’m no longer the same person I was before. I’m not sure that’s a change I’d actually welcome but as the days go by, I know that they will mold me to becoming a better brother, son and friend for everyone within my sphere of influence.

It's been a while....

well, i don't know what sparked this reunion with my blog but i felt that i have spent too much away from this most important lifeline of mine. i don't have much to write in this post but i will post an essay that i wrote for my first assignment for my LL114 class... it's a narrative essay and it talks about my experiences during the time that Jese passed away. I do apologise for not putting anything new up but now i'm back and i've got lots to add and say... heck i've got the time to do it so why the heck no??? lol

stay tuned for more updates....

big luvin!