today was a bad day.
Ms goh passed away today.
I know we used to niao her and get irritated at her all the time because of all her ridiculous rules comments and demands. i remember what pi told me in sec 3 when i just found out that ms goh was gonna teach us chem." Ms GK Goh?! whoa you die." i remember the horrifying stories of how she used to torture the b band girls till they cried for mercy and how she used to make everybody buy highlighters and pens so that they could all highlight the textbook and lines of notes in the exact same fashion.just they way she wanted it.
perfection. she was always like that.
I remember the trepidation the day we first met her. The class had heard so many horror stories from seniors. and then in comes this mousy old lady with her long pants and flower print shirt. i remember her gold-rimmed spectacles, her painstakingly permed and dyed black hair, and those drawn on eyebrows of hers. I know it isn't exactly a picture that brings to mind affection, but that was the way Ms Goh was. She kept people at a distance with the way she lectured and reqiured us to do the weirdest things for lessons. I remember how she used to minus marks and scold us for writing ppt as ppt. see the diff?it's the fullstop.
she used to write things like "don't understand at all. never pay attention. see me!" and everybody would end up with a see me at the top of their assignment page and then p 1,3,4,6... on the top right corner in red.anybody who managed to get away without a see me is a complete god to be worshipped. haha.
But Ms Goh was that way. she'd go on forever about the nitty gritty things and its precisely cos she cares and is willing to put in the effort to help every single one of us score, that's why she rambles on. She always put herself ahead of others. always put values above everything else.
Ms Goh got cancer a few years back, before she started teaching us.In 2004, she had a relapse.Everybody was shocked. there were rumours flying around about it, but nobody was sure. She began taking leave, and each time she didn't come to school we always felt happy to have escaped her class. thinking back, i feel guitly. Ms Goh is somebody with a heavy sense of responsibility. She'd never take leave for no reason. She'd never be absent from anything without a perfectly good reason. and when she left for a few weeks, we knew it was serious. The school got together to pray for her, and somehow she pulled through, healthy again from a second recovery.It was really a miracle, and she came back to school quickly after that. But cos of the heavy responsibility of taking on so many students in her poor health, she gave up on the O level batch of students. which was us. She apologised over and over again for abandoning us halfway through our O level year. I remember seeing her frail silouhette in the canteen ever so often. Queuing at the yong taufu stall. Seeing her wear her silk scarf always made my heart cringe. She looked even smaller, and less guarded. Such a strong woman in such a frail shell. I'd be afraid to go talk to her, always. Like oys said, she used to pick on me like crazy. Now that she's gone, i really do miss her.Sometimes when you get too complacent, you take things for granted. I knew ms Goh might pass on soon. But always seeing her so strong and so optimistic, it never really settled in. How big an impact her illness had on her.
Imagine not being able to see her again. I can't. I thought she'd always be there.I always thought When we go back to visit we can complain to her about how difficult jc chem is and how her notes made it all better. just the way she used to tell it to us in class, about how her old girls always used to say that to her. Now we'll never have the chance. I wish i'd had the guts to talk to her all those times i saw her. I didn't know it'd be the last.but its too late now.i'll miss the way she goes " don't be yaya!" and she'd swing her hands around in her old lady way. i'll miss the way she used to lecture us on manners and on helping others. I don't know how she used to say it in such a wrong yet such a right manner.I'll miss seeing her red scrawly handwriting, "not listening again in class, chee jia" beside my perfectly copied out answer. I'll miss her picking on me when i yawn in class. I'll miss her crazily intricate powerpoint slides with the dozens of bad colour combis. I'll miss seeing her tiny hunchbacked figure patrolling around school. I'll miss her saturday 6 hr long makeup lessons in the ava room. I'll miss how she used to order food for us just for those long makeup lectures. Nasi Lemak and Bee Hoon.She always used to ask us what we preferred and make a tally with hock seng, or the malay stall we all love for those fried chicken wings. I'll miss the breaks where she'd tell us to sleep on the ava room chairs so that we'd have the energy to go the full 6 hours. I'll miss her saying that we're her children. there're so many things and the list could go on forever.
I don't know if i should feel happy or sad.That she's finally out of all this pain. But she's gone on to a better place. Definitely. Imagine her somewhere happy, playing with the angels and cherubs, way up there in heaven. Perhaps it was the right time for her to go after all.
______wished upon a shooting star.
5:58 AM
