My imaginary boyfriend

1 : Tum-Tum Drum

To recount what helps you understand That Thing, I will need to begin properly.

The name of That Thing is Klong. The story between Klong and me began 22 years ago when I was five. It was around two months after I had lost my dad, or to be exact, it was two months after I had seen my dad passing away in front of my own eyes in a car accident. I couldn't recall the moment when it happened. I was not quite certain sometimes whether it was good or bad luck. Mom told me later that she was so busy that day, so dad and I had to return home before she did. She found out about what happened when she got a phone call from the hospital, stating that dad and I had been in an accident -- in a car that flipped over. Dad was found dead on site but I survived by some miracle. I later regained my consciousness in the ward but couldn't remember anything. I couldn't even remember why I was in that car nor the fact that the car did flip. This led to my question for the doctor.

"How is daddy doing?"

The only answer I got was just a gentle pat on my head.

I asked about dad again when mom visited me in the ward. She shook her head, cried, and then hugged me. I was both stupefied and confused about what had happened to dad and why mom was crying and hugging me so tightly. After her tears dried out, she began to speak.

"He's not coming home with us."

"Where is he going, mommy?" I asked, innocently.

"He's going to another home, honey." She sniffed, then forced a smile.

"Can't we join him at that home?"

"Yes, we can but not now, honey. It's... not our time yet. We have to let him move there before us."

I didn't ask her further since she immediately went back to sobbing. It was right at that moment that I learned not to ask anything further about dad because if I ever did -- either with short or long questions -- her answers were crying. I didn't want anymore of her tears since dad had told me that the most important woman in our lives was mom.
"We must work together to take good care of mommy, all right?, Phai." He used to tell me that.

"All right, daddy. We're going to work together for mommy." I used to assure him, too.

Although I, in my five years of age, didn't quite understand death, I never tried asking mom nor mentioning about him, not even once. All I knew was that he had to live somewhere else and somehow couldn't take care of mom anymore. Therefore, I must resume his responsibility even if all I could do was just fragments of his.

As I look back, this whole accident thing forced adulthood on me when I was just five years old. Since I didn't quite understand the true meaning of death at the moment, I wasn't grieving.

You know what? They say that people with stupidity won't be sad. I don't think that's true. The truth is people without comprehension of loss won't grieve. If you're not able to comprehend the meaning of loss, you will never feel it. On the other hand, you will feel like the lost is still with us -- more like they move somewhere else but still exist somewhere in the same universe -- so you will never sense the feeling of loss. And the feeling of loss itself is the main reason for all the grieving, isn't it? If we don't feel loss, we won't feel grieving. And incomprehension, so-called innocence, might have been the gift of our youth -- the gift that we used up on the way to our adulthood -- after all.

Where was I? Oh yes, I hadn't been grieving because I didn't comprehend loss. Right, I wasn't so sad but that doesn't mean that I didn't suffer. Despite not being sad at all, I felt lonely, very deeply. There were only three of us; mom, dad and I. We weren't so different from other ordinary families in the society. The only thing that distinguished ourselves from them was that my mom was the breadwinner and dad was the homemaker, who took care of me, took me to and fro school and did all the chores that mom couldn't manage due to her time constraints.