A Life Wasted

Tonight I witnessed a death. This is the second time in my life that I saw someone actually breathed his last.I met this young man for the first time many years ago when he visited us during Eid with his late Mum.He was maybe two or three years old then. I remember that his Mum mentioned that he only drank plain boiled water.

His parents were divorced and later both remarried different spouses. He was an only child. After his Mum died about three years ago, this boy found himself without a base and subsequently then lost his way in life. As his father lives far away and never actually cared for him, he spent his time with either of his aged grandmothers.The poor old ladies simply were not up to it in caring for him as they treated him as an adult, assuming that he could take care of himself. Alas, someone else took him under his wings. Except that it was not for his wellbeing and advantage.He was then introduced to the world of shabu. Whatever money, his Mum left him went into the drug business. That lead to his downfall. Tonight I met his former school friends who cared about him but stopped being his friends when he started doing drugs. Tonight was too late, his organs were gone. As he was admitted to the hospital without any identification, he was first registered as an unknown. He was kept alive by the life supporting respirator and given medication to sustain him till the hospital authorities sorted out his identity with his next-of-kin. He died within 30 minutes after the doctors pull the plug.

Now, that sets me thinking and asking. Who could be held responsible when a child becomes a drug addict? Is it the parents, drug pushers,his peers ,other  family members or the boy himself for not being able to say no to what is not good for him. Is society at fault? Is the social structure too brittle that more amd more young lives are wasted. I know for sure that there is a certain graveyard in Kuala Lumpur that is reserved for unclaimed bodies of drug addicts and HIV positive corpses.

Drugs kills the body slowly but surely.Once a persons becomes an addict, he or she loses all self respect. They will do anything in order to get their daily puff. Girls would sell their bodies. Becoming pregnant outsided marriage leads to the ever increasing number of babies being abandoned or killed at birth. The boys will be lured to traffic the drugs in order to get their supply for themselves. The drug problem is the root of all evil. Snatch thieves could be drug addicts. Petty burglaries are caused by drug addicts.From petty thefts they later become murderers and robbers. When they are high on drugs, they could do anything, even murder their own parents.

The boy who died tonight was born in 1988, the same year as my son Afif. I pray that my own children will be kept safe from unhealthy elements. Stay away from nocturnal outdoor activities. They say that the underworld business thrives at night.Kids either get into trouble when there happen to be in the middle of rival gang clashes or get into trouble with the police when they fail to stop at police road blocks.

Nobody wants their children to be drug addicts. But what would you do if someone in your family becomes one?