Who are the heroes in our community? Those who never give up hope. Those who fight for hope. Those who embrace hope even when everything is pitch dark, still and silent.
Kudos to ST for bridging the events that happened to two ex-SIA heroes. Both involved crashes, one was a plane, flight 006, on 31 October 2000, and the other was a recent car crash, on Feb 13 2021, in Tanjong Pagar.
Though the events were separated by time, what they however share in common is the indomitable human spirit to fight for every breath of hope in their body to give meaning and purpose to their lives.
Mdm Farzana Abdul Razak (“Farzana”), 39, recalled that she went through a similar ordeal that Raybe Oh, 26, is now going through when the latter bravely ran into a burning car, clad in her T-short and shorts, trying in vain to save her boyfriends and friends.
Farzana herself survived a flight crash while it was taking off in Taipei, which took the lives of 83 of the 179 people on board. She was only 18 years old then. She was “in her fourth month as an air stewardess.”
Farzana recalled that while helping other passengers to evacuate the plane, she was severely injured. "I didn't feel any pain and realised the state I was in only after a passenger, who happened to be a doctor, told me I was severely injured and needed to go to a hospital.”
Journalist Zaihan Mohamed Yusof reports that Farzana “spent the next two months in hospitals in Taiwan and Singapore. She had suffered smoke inhalation, internal bleeding and burns to 45 per cent of her body.”
Raybe herself suffered burns to 80% of her body. After 10 days in SGH’s intensive care unit, she was moved to a high-dependency ward. Raybe is reported to be “conscious and in a stable condition”. She is no doubt a fighter. Farzana said: “I don't know the extent of her injuries but I know she is a strong woman.”
Nobody can ever imagine the pain that both of them were (and for Raybe, is still) going through. When it comes to burns, especially deep burns, there are three layers of the skin exposed. First is the skin itself. Then, the blood vessels, and lastly, the nerve endings. When all three layers are burnt, the skin looks “white and leathery”.
The healing process is often a grieving process where, according to psychologist Dr Evelyn Boon, “they may experience increasing pain and anger. They may have rapid emotional shifts from feeling of hopelessness to depressive episodes. These are part of the grieving process.”
Farzana admitted that for eight years after the crash, she was deep in depression. “When the bandages finally came off her face two weeks after the crash, she felt she had been robbed of her looks and future. She did not recognise the person in the mirror.”
Mind you, she had scars over her hands, legs and face. She also went through 11 skin grafts and “wore pressure garments for the next few years.”
Farzana said: “I couldn't accept the new reality of life. The change was just too much to bear.”
Lesson? One, and it is in the words of Farzana.
In 2006, she went to KL to seek recover. There, she met her husband who gave her “a lot of space to heal”. They now have three children. What shook her out of her depression was a fall she suffered “during the second trimester of her first pregnancy.”
She said: "I realised there was more to life than living selfishly in the past. I've learnt all wounds heal over time - emotional scars too."
Let me just add here that Mark Twain once said that comedy/humour is tragedy plus time. In this case, healing carries with it a similar principle. With time, like what Farzana had experienced, all wounds heal, especially emotional scars.
Farzana said that the “healing process will be a long one but you must want to get better for yourself...What I want to share with (Raybe) is not to lose hope and blame yourself for all that has gone wrong.”
I believe the humour referred to in Mark Twain’s quote is not about making light the pain and sufferings. But, it is about a light in a different context/source. It is about seeing things in a different light, a whole new or fresh perspective. That vision comes with healing, as the grieving process takes its unavoidable course. It is a long journey no less of self-unravelling before one breaks through from the dark night of the soul.
We all need to know this too - even for those reading this who are going through your own personal trial. When ST brings Farzana’s and Raybe’s stories together, they are not just bridging shared pain and experiences, they are more intimately bridging the gap of courage, hope and perspective.
Courage, because it takes a lot of it (daily even) to stand before the mirror of reality when all the smoke and dust have settled to look at the broken pieces of a life once so full of dreams, hopes and confidence.
On this, Farzana knows what she is talking about, for she has been there, that is, the shadowland of depression, and it took her years of courage and determination to find her way out.
Hope, because when a severely burnt victim is wheeled into the hospital, the first thing that the emergency staff do is to pump air into the victim’s lungs. This is done because “if the airway is swollen shut, it can deprive the patient of oxygen, affecting chances of survival.”
That oxygen is hope too in one’s long recovery journey. It is the oxygen pumped into a life, into her spirit and soul, to lift them up, above the broken pieces and mess that initially seem so bleak, so dark. Depression like swollen walls in our spirit, may be closing in, but it is hope - like oxygen - that gives us space, breathing space, to see beyond our pain and sorrow.
That leaves us with perspective. It is healing’s vision. We all need that kind of farsightedness (so to speak). Coincidentally, farsightedness is a medical condition called hyperopia, where you can see distant objects clearly, but objects nearby may be blurry.
I am using that same term deliberately, not as a condition, but as a healing process where we need to see hope more clearly in the days ahead, and at the same time, let the past hurts and blame grow strangely dim, even blurry. That is what Farzana meant when she said: “What I want to share with (Raybe) is not to lose hope and blame yourself for all that has gone wrong.”
That is the vision of restoration and healing, one that holds on day-by-day to a new tomorrow, while one leaves behind the pains of yesterday.
Let me end by saying that what I have written are no doubt just words expressed in this post. Yet, in all our silent pain, what bridges the gap for us are the words (and stories) we tell ourselves when no one is hearing.
And these words/stories when recounted with hope and perspective give us the courage to face every new day as it unfolds. They are also the light that shines on our journey, one small step at a time, and with time, this light becomes our joy even against the backdrop of a past once swollen with sorrow (the sorrow is not forgotten though, it is transformed).
So, godspeed Raybe Oh. May your journey be one always inspired by hope and by a perspective glowing with courage.
And thank you Farzana, for being hope’s eyes, offering a vision Raybe (and us) could always catch a glimpse of so as to lift her (and our) spirit above the circumstances.
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