The passing of the Serf

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don’t care, I’m still free
You can’t take the sky from me

I was going to avoid this altogether, but the emails have started, and so i will say my piece.

Yes it’s true. The Singapore Serf has left us.

To be clinical about it, he was found deceased in his room on Monday morning. The autopsy was inconclusive.

It has sunk in somewhat, that our late housemate really is gone. But it’s the little things that bring back the moments of disbelief. His toothbrush and paste still sitting neatly atop the soap dish in the shower. His boots lined up against the wall on by the front door. The wonky smell of the exhaust of his little Ford Fiesta.

The memory of him popping his head around the open bathroom door in one morning, while i was cleaning and cursing at a smidge of algae in the shower stall, grinning and saying “Guess what i have?”

And pulled out a new shower curtain from behind his back (he knew how to get on my soft side, he did). He’d gone to Ikea in between waking up and gotten a new shower curtain, half-seriously apologizing for getting the same design because “i don’t like change.”

How he tried very hard to be all nochalant when it became quite clear the husband and i were quite, quite taken with his fiance.

How healthy eating was generally against his philosophy, but he’d wolf up the piles of veggies i generally feed us all and wave my spatula at the boys to emphasize my expectation that they finish every last morsel of green. I don’t think he took my so-you-don’t-get-scurvy admonishment to heart, but he was always glad to be fed.

It’s the small things. I didn’t know the Serf very well, certainly not as well as his friends. All i did was live with him, and i must say he was a dream housemate, but you get to know people’s funny little sides when you see them day in and day out. He was my devil’s advocate on the whole motorcycle issue. He was looking forward to when i finally got mine, so he could feel that particular wind in his hair.

We’d started to tease him in the last few months, about getting a little pink car (D’s favourite color) when his current little green one gave out on him. I guess we won’t find out if the pink bit eventuates.

He will be missed.

I will ask that you direct any queries to Calamari For Thought, if you absolutely have to enquire privately, or friends/family if you know them personally. It doesn’t matter how much correspondence between you and the Serf you forward to me to prove that you’re not a troll. You’re not going to get any more information than you’ll read here (especially if you’re going to be rude. Fer cryin’ out loud people, it doesn’t hurt to have some bloody manners), out of respect for family and friends, who are going through an intensely difficult time right now.

Requiescat in pace.