APRIL 23 — If someone had told me I would go to war with a church over Easter weekend, I would have laughed.
It all started Friday morning when I went to the hospital again and had a rather good morning.
For once the traffic was super smooth.
Before an hour was up I had already paid my consultation fee (it usually takes two to three hours of waiting sometimes) and within two hours I got to see a surgeon who told me my most recent X-rays were fine.
All I needed to do was get an all-clear from anaesthesiology and my surgery would be booked for May.
I passed that hurdle, got a nice, pleasant session with a cheery physiotherapy doctor who also wished me the best of luck with my surgery.
It seemed like an honest-to-God miracle to be home from the hospital before noon and so I decided to order takeout.
You see, I had woken up at 6am to get to the hospital and had no time to have a proper meal with all that waiting.
Not an hour later I walked out my door to see not one, but two cars blocking my gate.
My hapless delivery rider was unable to go around either car and was forced to camp outside a neighbour’s house and I had to open my gate and also navigate around the cars who had decided my porch was a free parking spot.
I knew who was parked there — parishioners at the nearby church because, unfortunately for me, it was Good Friday.
Reader, I was livid.
It was hard to get past both of those cars; there was just a tiny opening right next to the drain.
Being physically compromised with my weakened legs from chemo as well as not having eaten, I could have fallen and hurt myself.
Then I would have to lie there in the dirt waiting for an ambulance that would also be blocked by the same two damn cars.
After thanking my rider, I set my food down on a table and marched right outside.
I’m not proud of what I did.
I don’t know where I found the energy.
Somehow, I was angry enough to drag a 1.3-metre-tall heavy wooden planter, a dustbin and three flowerpots and two of my ‘No Parking’ cones that I had to prevent people blocking my gate (though obviously they didn’t work) to the front where I decided to arrange them in various calculated-to-inconvenience positions.
Maybe, I reasoned, they could read the traffic cones better if I planted both of them on their car hoods.
My piecé de resistance was the sign I printed on my gate on A4 paper that stated: ““What would Jesus do? Not block a cancer patient’s gate! If an ambulance comes you can fly here to move your car, ah?”
Then because I was very tired, I lay down, ate my food but was still somehow very angry.
It was probably a combination of my prescription steroids and sheer rage.
I know, I know, I was petty and dramatic.
That wasn’t even the end — I emailed the church and to their credit they said they would “speak with the parish priest to find a solution” while also trying to explain that the church parking lot was under renovation so no one could park there.
Politely I replied that, well, parishioners shouldn’t make it my problem.
I know people would say I should have handled it with more grace or as Malaysians say “kasi can (give them a chance)”.
No matter how Karen-like I sound, I still don’t understand the selfishness that goes into parking in front of someone’s home entrance without even leaving a business card or phone number behind.
I dreaded the coming Easter Sunday because it meant, yes, the likelihood of someone again blocking my gate.
Fortunately only one car parked outside my house, right outside the makeshift boundary I had constructed, planter, sign, parking cone and all and most importantly not obstructing the gate.
Speaking of Easter, it was also when the long-ailing Pope Francis finally made his return to the Lord the day after.
Like many people, of all faiths (or non-professing), I mourned his passing, the loss of a servant of God with an enduring, unshakeable compassion.
Even on his last day on Earth he still found the energy to call for a ceasefire and peace in Palestine.
Even during his last week he found time to visit inmates of a prison on Holy Thursday.
Meanwhile here I am almost crying while struggling to put on my new compression bra for my post-surgery recovery, because my fingers are weak and feeble, the zip keeps coming apart and my fragile mind was struggling trying to figure out how it worked.
Life really likes to keep humbling me, I think, to almost be defeated by, of all things, a bra.
Maybe if I live as long as the Pope I’ll learn to save my anger and conviction for worthier things than inconsiderate churchgoers and find it in this much smaller heart to have a bit more compassion.
Right now, though, as cancer and Pope Francis both remind me — none of us are guaranteed even one more breath of life.
So this Easter season I will remember that life is a blessing, even when it is laced with pain and uncertainty and the only way, thorny or not, is forward.
Even if people are really bad at parking.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
