I didn't have an umbrella, but fortunately I wasn't pressed for time. I should be able to wait out the storm, except that the five-foot-way didn't make much of a shelter. The wind drove the rain in; five minutes more and my trousers would be all wet.

Not expecting the rain to stop anytime soon, perhaps I could get a coffee while waiting it out. I'd be in a dry place at least. So I walked down the row of shops, side-stepping pools of water till I came to the first coffee joint, nipped in and was glad to find a table at the window. I would be able to watch for when the rain would die down.

With a hot latte and a magazine from the shelf, I settled into my seat, snug and perhaps a little smug too, for I was in a dry place while others were outside huddling behind pillars to escape the beating rain. But as I turned my head back to the magazine that my hands were opening, my eyes glanced across the row of shops and the bus stop across the road.

They seemed unusually familiar, despite the fact that I seldom come to this part of Singapore. I was there that day only because I had to meet a client in the vicinity. It all came rushing back in an instant – not just the shops across, or the bus stop, but the rain, the window, and my gosh, virtually the same table and seat.

How uncanny. It must have been exactly this shop unit, because only from this one would one get a straight-on view of the bus stop. It wasn't a coffee joint then, but a restaurant, because we had lunch here, the 4 of us, some simple fried rice if I remember correctly. The restaurant has evidently moved out and the coffee people moved in, the place remodeled, and the table and the chair -- they must be new. But the spot where I was sitting was exactly the same. Yes, I was sitting right here, by the same plate glass window.

That was 9 years ago, on a day like this. I don't think it was raining as heavily though, just drizzly and overcast. I was here for lunch with Sam, but there wasn't a spare table. By chance, Sam saw his friend, whose name I've forgotten, at a table for 4. They exchanged waves, and we were invited to join them. Them -- because Sam's friend was with another friend, who would become my boyfriend for the following 3 years.

That's how I met Chye, at this spot, in this shophouse, on this street, on a dull day like this.

It's a bit of a blur now, but Sam had to go off somewhere quite soon after lunch, and for some reason, lost to memory too, Sam's friend also disappeared, leaving Chye and me at the table. Instantly hitting it off with each other, we didn't care that our respective friends had abandoned us. We would stay at the same table the entire afternoon, in the space of which, we traveled the world.

Today, all that is remembered is bittersweet. I cheated on him, he cheated on me. I don't think he ever knew that I had a few flings, and in fact in my mind, I didn't even feel all that guilty about them. They meant nothing to me, they were just anonymous thrills, why would they mean anything to him, even if he had known? But still, I made sure he didn't know.

I think he tried to conceal his flings too, except that his weren't anonymous. More, his had phone numbers attached, and with that came SMS messages. No, please don't think that, I didn't snoop into his phone, but there was one day when the messages were unusually frequent and he behaved suspiciously each time the phone beeped.

I got the sense that he tried to shake off the new guy, certainly, he appeared genuinely annoyed to keep receiving what might have been pestering messages, but -- I don't know, perhaps I was feeling just as guilty myself -- I made myself the wronged party, accused him of thoughtlessness and sulked for days.

He responded by sulking too, but eventually, we made up and tried to put it behind us.

Yet things were never the same again. The well had been poisoned. Where I used to think nothing of his getting calls and messages from his friends, I now wondered differently what those callers were proposing. Where it hadn't mattered to me that I was paying for all our holidays together since I was the higher-earning half -- in fact, I rather relished the role of giver -- suddenly, I began to resent paying.

And before long, it was over. Sensing our growing distance, he called it quits. I knew of course, that things hadn't been going well between us, but I was not ready to call it quits. And anyway, he was the cheater, he was the one living off my financial generosity -- who was he to take the initiative to call it quits? He had no right.

Ya, I was angry then, hurt and angry. Of course -- and I know that now -- I had no right to be angry. It was at least equally my fault.

Now? I'm not angry anymore. It's regret. It's an ache that won't go away. I messed up, he messed up.

But isn't it funny how I began by telling you about the window seat and how I met Chye, only to tell you how I lost him? As so often, we can recount the beginning, but we can only feel the ending. Funny, huh?

* * * * *

Rocco's story:

Growing up in a small town in Mindoro, there wasn't much to do weekends. My older brother had a friend whose family had a jeepney, and they, together with 3 or 4 others often used it to get away to a village on the beach not too far away.

Sometime when I was about 15, I was allowed to join them on occasion. It was a very quiet fishing village with an old jetty sticking out over the water. We would spend the whole night on that jetty, chatting, joking and of course, drinking. One of my brother's friends always had a guitar, good for singing along when we had nothing more to say conversation-wise. We'd be out all night, usually sleeping under the stars when the beer ran out.

One weekend, I didn't go with them. That weekend, my brother drowned.

In the intervening years, I moved to Manila and then to Singapore. In 2001, I met Henry, a Belgian guy visiting Singapore for the first time. He was so taken in by Asia, he was back less than a year later. This time around, we made plans in advance, and we would do a week's holiday in Thailand where he had some other friends.

One evening during that week, we found ourselves in a coastal town -- I think it was Cha Am or Hua Hin, it's a bit of a blur now -- and Henry and I were walking along the beach. Then I heard the strumming of a guitar, and I saw a jetty. And a group of young men sitting in a circle at the far end of it. I could no longer move. A tide of grief filled me, displacing even the air in my lungs. My knees went soft and I had to look for a rock to sit on. To sob.

Fuck. What is this? It's been 13 years. In that time, I've seen piers and jetties, though more in photos and movies than in real life, and they have never brought me down like this. I've heard guitars most Sundays in church, but they've never reduced me to weeping jelly.

But there I was on that beach, doubled over on a rock, reliving a boyhood loss, crying more tears than I might ever have cried, even counting the weeks immediately after the accident.

Yet I was fully conscious what was happening around me. Henry was bewildered. Had he said something wrong? Why did I suddenly break down? He couldn't know; he didn't even know that I once had an older brother.

Other people, from a distance away, stopped and stared. My sobs and gasping for air must have rent the still night, though it was probably too dark to make out what was happening. I was even able to know that I should be grateful it was dark, so they wouldn't be able to recognise me, this fool, in the morning.

I was conscious all this while that I was severely embarrassed, that Henry was completely flustered, yet that I was totally unable to control myself. It was as if there were two me's. One was an emotional wreck, the other still scanning the horizon and taking notes about others' reactions. It was incredibly weird.

Henry tried to help, but he was not good at it. He tried to cheer me up by making light of everything, anything. The more he tried, the more it annoyed me. I just wanted to be alone, but he didn't get the message. Finally, "Oh, you're so cute when you cry." 

"Fuck off," I yelled. He was being just too trite. I dumped him as soon as we got back to Bangkok.

Now I can't look at wooden jetties again, especially ones built over sandy beaches, without feeling the pain. Without fail, I think of my brother. Without fail tears well up in my eyes, though I don't collapse the same way anymore, perhaps because now I can see it coming.

But it's also funny how, as much as jetties remind me of my brother, they now also remind me of myself -- of how I broke down that night in 2002, and how, as much as we may wish otherwise, there are many things we cannot control in our lives, neither of our loved ones' fate, nor even the workings of our mind.

* * * * *

My story:

My watched died. All day Monday, I was rushing from appointment to appointment, every one of them starting and ending at precisely 9:18.

I had a bit of time on Tuesday, so the first order of business was to find a reputable watch shop and get the battery replaced. I vaguely remembered there was one near where I was that handled Solvil and Titus, the brand of my watch. That would be good, as they should have the correct battery, and hopefully should do a good job of replacing it without screwing up something, e.g. leaving the watch no longer water-resistant.

So I went there, spoke to the counter clerk and got prompt service.

While waiting the 5 minutes, I looked around me. I've been here before, I said to myself, though it would have been years back. Yes, the last time I was here, I bought a watch for my mother's birthday.

But today, she won't have any need for a watch anymore. Oh, she's still here, but her Parkinson's is quite advanced. Hers has progressed rather slowly, but that only means she's been suffering it for over 20 years now. Most days, she is quite disoriented. She can neither recall the date, day of week or even the year. Sometimes, she's lucid enough about what's going on around her, other times, disjointed fragments of the past displace the present.

"It's so late now, why aren't you in pyjamas yet?" she'd asked me, as if I were still a 10-year-old boy.

I once gave her a piece of cake on a napkin. She saw the paper napkin as part of the cake and bit into it.

Another day, I put a few slices of mango on a plate before her. She reached out for the ketchup and began to pour it over the mango.

The worst however, is when she hallucinates. She'd get alarmed by the noise the burglar's making as he ransacks the adjacent room, she'd be agitated that no one is doing anything to chase away the black cat that has just sauntered in. But that, I am told, is not a direct symptom of Parkinson's. It's a side effect of the heavy-duty medication she's on. The medication is very effective at controlling her tremors, but they cause hallucinations. Yet, without the medication, she's in pain, as the tremors fatigue the half-wasted muscles in her arms and legs. She's barely 40 kilograms now.

And so we face the trade-off: physical comfort and the banishment of pain against the preservation of the mind.

When I visit her, we don't have a sensible conversation anymore.

"The newspaper man was very rude to me today," she'd say.

I would look at my father, and he'd give me the well-practised but subtle expression that told me the newspaperman hadn't even come by.

"I don't think he meant to," I'd say in reply. "Perhaps he was in a hurry. Nowadays in the name of productivity, they have to cover so many houses."

"Then your father took down all the books from the bookshelf."

"He was looking for one particular book," I'd say. "Anyway, the bookshelf looks quite neat now," making her look at the books corner to assure her that they had been put back.

I'm humouring her, no doubt just like how she humoured me for my gibberish when I was a 2-year-old. Of course, I don't remember anything from that age, in fact, sugary TV movies notwithstanding, I don't remember her saying anything to me, at any age, that was especially profound or life-changing. She was just there for me through most of my life.

Hers is now drawing to a close, but because it's such a long twilight, I really wonder, when it's over, will my memory be skewed? Will I remember her more in sickness than in health? Must endings always crowd out beginnings?

© Yawning Bread