Ron Emmons          Writer & Photographer
  • Blog
    • Introduction
  • Teaklord
    • Description and buying options
    • News of Teak Lord
    • The Making of a Book Cover
    • Tracking the Teak Lord 1
    • Tracking the Teak Lord 2
    • Review of Teak Lord
    • Teak Talk
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Periodicals >
      • A Culture Blossoms
      • Black, White and Blue
      • Deep in the Delta
      • Strange Town
      • Blissful Bloom
      • The Wonder of Water
      • Striking Signs
      • A Hike up Chiang Dao Mountain
      • Quirky Chiang Mai
      • Trailblazer
      • On the Road to Rio
    • Digital content
  • Portfolio
    • Searching for Shangri-La
    • Travel
    • Biography
    • Nature
    • Buddhism
    • Photography
    • Article List
  • Short Stories
    • Beyond the End of the Road
    • The Green Monkey's Tale
    • The Red Lion's Tale
    • Eruption in Ethiopia
    • First Flight
    • As Dawn Breaks over Choroni
    • The Hungry Eye
    • On Spirit Mountain
  • Biography
    • Ron's CV

Welcome!

What an amazing world we live in...to watch an audio slideshow introducing my website, please click here.
Open slideshow

I wanna go like Mo

15/1/2013

3 Comments

 
Picture
On the afternoon of 1st January this year I got one of those emails you hope you’ll never get, with the succinct title ‘sad news’. I took a deep breath and opened it. It was from Lisa, the partner of Mo, a friend of mine, saying that they’d been partying like everyone else on New Year’s Eve, and when they got home, Mo sat down in the kitchen and asked for a drink of water. As Lisa turned to the fridge, Mo’s heart gave out and he keeled over. Gone. Departed.
As I scrolled through the hundreds of names that the email had been sent to, and looked at the oh-so-poignant attached photos of Mo goofing it up a few hours before he died, dancing and wearing some dumb hat and false moustache, I realized how many people he meant so much to, and the grief kicked in. How could someone having so much fun and making others happy go so quickly, like he’d been snatched when we weren’t looking?

Then as the stab of the initial shock subsided, I began to think differently. Mo may have gone way before his time (only 61), but he went at the perfect moment - after a fun night out with friends, at the end of a rewarding year and with no expectations of the new one yet formed. How neat. 

By his own definition, Mo Tejani was a global refugee, one of a growing clan on this planet. Born in Uganda into an Indian family, he was kicked out by Idi Amin and began a life of wandering from country to country, mostly teaching English and working for aid organizations. Since he moved to Chiang Mai several years ago, he had got into writing, and we’d enjoyed many hours chatting about weird places we had been and about his or my next great travel book. If you want to know more about Mo, read his ‘A Chameleon’s Tale’, a largely autobiographical book that is available on amazon.com.

A few days later I attended his cremation - a simple affair at which members of his family and friends read out eulogies before the big burn. All of them mentioned his obsession with living life to the full and his compassion for all living things, and the tears trickled down my cheeks. Then we walked up in file to offer a flower and to hover for a moment over the open coffin before it was consigned to the furnace.

We’re all going to go one day, and most of us won’t choose the way we go, but if anyone up there is listening - I wanna go like Mo.
3 Comments
David Henley (CPA Media)
13/2/2013 09:14:01 am

Well put Ron, I totally agree.

Reply
keith
18/2/2013 04:48:44 pm

What a superb piece Ron! Thank you! Me too by the way.

Reply
Rose Offner link
23/4/2015 05:27:15 am

Really nice story about MO, his life, his joy, your friendship and the way we die, and the timing. I like that you have a section called personal. That is what I am interested in living a meaningful life and authentic storytelling.




She died on Friday. I heard she was in a coma for a week.. Thankfully I saw her two or so months before. When I would call her I often wondered if she would still be alive and now she is not. Then, I would say, wow, you’re still alive; then we both laughed because at 93 of course it could happen at any time. I’m ready to go she would say, I have no idea why I’m still here. We had that conversation for about 5 years.

Then we would talk about scenarios what she still wanted to do, to finish, to pass over to someone else. We made lists of the tasks she wanted completed, her dreams. Sometimes it was like she had crawled into my body just to use my arms, legs, and energy to finish what she wanted done before she died.

While painting she often danced too. Music playing a paintbrush in hand, some shade of blue on the tip of her brush; that was when she used paint brushes. Later in life when she couldn’t hold them well enough she used her hands to paint. Transmogrified gnarled-tree-branches were there where her hands once were, that is what she painted with. Her tree-branch-hands covered with thick paint, impasto.

I had a feeling her daughter would not tell me when she passed, and she did not; she was not fond of our friendship. “Did you call her, or did she call you, “ she would sometimes ask. She called me. I would reply. It was really none of her dam business, but she had become her mother’s keeper.

Char died on Friday April 17th I didn’t attend. I was happy for her, she was finally going to be free. She had been ready to die for a long time.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Ron's Blog

    Categories

    All
    Buddhism
    Hiking
    Historical
    Myanmar
    Nature
    Personal
    Photography
    Post Apocalypse
    Publishing
    Reviews
    Social Issues
    Thailand
    UK
    Vietnam
    Writing

    Picture

    Ron Emmons 

    is a British writer and photographer based in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

    Categories

    All
    Buddhism
    Hiking
    Historical
    Myanmar
    Nature
    Personal
    Photography
    Post Apocalypse
    Publishing
    Reviews
    Social Issues
    Thailand
    UK
    Vietnam
    Writing

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    June 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    October 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    July 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    July 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    March 2011

    RSS Feed

Text and images copyright © Ron Emmons 2000-2023

Contact details:

Ron Emmons
122 Moo 7, San Pisua,
Chiang Mai 50300, Thailand.

Tel/Fax: (66-53) 115150
Mobile: +66-841758104

ron@ronemmons.com


Contact Ron
  • Blog
    • Introduction
  • Teaklord
    • Description and buying options
    • News of Teak Lord
    • The Making of a Book Cover
    • Tracking the Teak Lord 1
    • Tracking the Teak Lord 2
    • Review of Teak Lord
    • Teak Talk
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Periodicals >
      • A Culture Blossoms
      • Black, White and Blue
      • Deep in the Delta
      • Strange Town
      • Blissful Bloom
      • The Wonder of Water
      • Striking Signs
      • A Hike up Chiang Dao Mountain
      • Quirky Chiang Mai
      • Trailblazer
      • On the Road to Rio
    • Digital content
  • Portfolio
    • Searching for Shangri-La
    • Travel
    • Biography
    • Nature
    • Buddhism
    • Photography
    • Article List
  • Short Stories
    • Beyond the End of the Road
    • The Green Monkey's Tale
    • The Red Lion's Tale
    • Eruption in Ethiopia
    • First Flight
    • As Dawn Breaks over Choroni
    • The Hungry Eye
    • On Spirit Mountain
  • Biography
    • Ron's CV