Journey

When I was first told the news, it seemed inevitable that life would change. However, filled with the optimism of youth (I was hardly 12), my expectation was that Mum would go to the States, get cured, and we'd go on living like we always had. How wrong I was! This cancer has not only had an impact on Mum's health, but also on all of us growing up. Though I've gone without the person I've needed most in my life for various periods over the five years, it is comforting knowing that if she could be there, I know she would have been. Nothing will bring back the lost time, but looking back, I can only thank God for his grace which has sustained Mum and kept her close with us against all odds.

As a child, my Mum was the person I was closest to. The long and extended trips away from home were not enough to maintain that old familiarity, and in some ways, I felt like the person I leaned on most was taken away. All that remained was a life of constant struggle to keep my head above the water. In the absence of her hand to hold, life became a journey filled with uncertainty. A journey that I knew my mother was, in a way, walking with everyone who cared about her.

Though some may believe this book to be about art, in my opinion it is actually a book about that journey. In that journey some find hope and the will to carry on in the eyes of their children, some find it in the warmth of the people gently urging them forward, or some find it in the lines of a painting. Or some find it in all those things, and my Mum certainly has.

Bryan Ong
June 2006