…Gone

There’s a charming little black spiritual called ‘Old Black Joe’, and it begins ‘Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay…’. Please remember that this was before ‘gay’ acquired its second meaning. Anyway, it could be the theme song of the last two days or so for me. I’ve just come back from a church youth group (not my own), and it just hit me that I’ll never be able to just walk right in to it again.

At least I’ve been freed from a certain little dental bond that I’ve been carrying for two years: my braces. I’ve been wearing them and wincing every now and then at stuck food and such for twenty-four months or so now, and let me tell you there is nothing quite like eating noodles for the first time in so long without worrying about little stuck bits dangling around your teeth. However, the retainers I’m now wearing have their bad points too; I’m still trying to adjust to them, and they taste like garlic. I don’t like garlic in great quantities, let alone fastened to my mouth.

It also helps that I can properly close my mouth now, and that my smile is not quite so metallic anymore. It’s heavenly, I tell you. I have a little fancy that heaven will be something like this: that when we lose our earthly bodies, we’ll realize that some limit that we had all gotten used to as a necessary evil has just become superfluous, and that we’ll all rediscover some deep-seated comforts, or blessing, or happiness that we thought was gone forever but had actually been there all along. It’s a nice thought that me smiling at little children will never again send them screaming away for Mummy.

There’s a whole list of people I shall probably never see again, a longer list of places I shall never go again (Killer Mountain being Number One), and a whole slew of little homely comforts I shall very, very soon be homesick for. I never really before began counting my little blessings, but when one begins, they really do add up to quite a sum.

None of the above lists, of course, includes Jack (who owes me my T-shirt). I have made amply sure that I will meet him while he’s in KL, and that during that time I shall get my shirt from him. At least, even if I do end up with the room-mate from hell, I’ll have the dubious joy of complaining about him, long and loud, to someone familiar.

My packing is very nearly nigh done; there’s scarcely a trace left of me in my rooms. You know, there’s a certain something about rooms belonging to someone absent that gives the beholder a strange feeling, even when the beholder is the absent someone. It’s odd, very odd.

I went to an island today on a family outing. (Another last experience.) It was enjoyable; my tan has gotten a few unnoticeable shades darker, I have found that my swimming skills have not completely disappeared through lack of use, and I drank more soft drinks today than I have in the past month or two.

Tomorrow is my very last day on this island; after that, goodbye to everyone I’ve known for the past few years. I recall a faint gladness when leaving KL, seven years ago; I hated my schoolmates, every last one of them, then. This time, I don’t know what to feel. I’m worried—who wouldn’t be?—but there’s a certain something, an unfounded optimism I suspect, that tells me I’m going to enjoy the next few years of my life. (Just in case you people think so, no, I don’t hate you. Actually I’m mildly distressed at having to leave all my old friends behind, but that’s a necessary evil.)

Incidentally, I’ve just found that most of my current friends are people I got to know only in Form Five; most of my Form Four classmates have been banished from my memory. In fact when I looked at the yearbook, I only recognized about ten people of my Form Four class. I can only suppose I have temporary amnesia.