The story of the young backpacker who died in Thailand, had been eating at me for over a month. I couldn’t understand why. I racked my brain over it, knowing I did not know him, even if he went to my school. I was a year too old to have taken him to camp. He was not one of my drama class students. I did not know him. I was sure of that.
I thought it might have to do with the violence he experienced that was a repeat of how we lost someone earlier this year, and it was bringing up the fear again. I thought it had everything to do with losing my cousin, Ryan Chan so unfairly early in the summer, followed by my classmate Anil. Too many unfathomable deaths in too short a time. I kept saying bad things come in threes, an imaginary mantra to just make it a little bit easier to comprehend. Then there was a fourth and it threw me off balance. I thought maybe it had everything to do with the fact at 24 I was a backpacker just like him, and through that I related another level to the story. It kept popping up, making me uncomfortable, something was amiss, I just knew it.
It turned out I did know him. He grew up in the same apartment block as me. He went to all the same schools as my sister and I. Starting in kindergarten, followed by primary school, then eventually headed to my high school. I shared a lift with him, I shared play space, I watched him grow from a toddler to a kid who if I recall correctly, I am pretty sure liked to torment me in one way or other. (grin)
Ever since I learnt that I felt I could let it go. My subconscious placated, I felt I could mourn a little, not for a stranger, but a person who flits in the background of my childhood all the time. I hope he is fine wherever he is. I know he will not be lonely as he joins another friend. So here is a nod, an acknowledgement, of that person. Someone who means a lot to some people I know and some people I don’t remember well, but is there in my mind.
Go in Peace Mark. Say “hello” to Michael Bill from us girls at 9B. Daniel Lawton if you see him, plus the rest of the Kennedy School Boys as well. I don’t believe in the curse, that people have whispered about for so long, but we remember them all.
Y
xxxx
Family set up Asian charity fund Sunday Times
Speaking for the first time about Mark Lemetti’s death, his father Roland said a memorial fund had been launched to raise money for the hospital in Cambodia that the 24-year-old visited shortly before his murder.
Roland said his son was moved by the plight of poverty-stricken children at the Jayavarman VII hospital, in Siem Reap, near Angkor.
Money from the sale of Mark’s car and his savings will be put into the fund, which has already received donations from friends in Britain and Hong Kong, where the family lived for several years.
In one of his last e-mails to his parents, sent in July, Mark described his experience at the clinic.
“I gave blood at a Siem Reap children’s hospital just because the poverty and disease amongst children is so overwhelming,” he wrote. “Dengue fever and tuberculosis has spread to epidemic proportions in many provinces.”
Roland, who lives in Warminster, Wiltshire, said: “Mark was deeply affected by the poverty in Cambodia and told us about the children’s hospital he visited at Siem Reap. He decided to give blood there as a gesture because the poverty amongst Cambodian children made such an impression on him.
“This seems a worthy cause to follow up with. We want to do this as a family because we feel it is what Mark would have wished.
“We have set up the fund and a friend of ours from Hong Kong is going to go out to Cambodia to vet the hospital we have in mind to make sure that the money is used properly.
“The fund is open to anyone who wants to contribute to it. Many of his friends have been very generous.”
Contributions to Mark’s Cambodian Children’s Fund can be made through the HSBC bank in Warminster.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1291960,00.html
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 