I must say, ever since the second wave of Covid-19 outbreak here, I had a lot of deep thought sessions, mostly early in the morning when I woke up, while staring at the ceiling, partly happy that I got to sleep in every single day, a wee bit missing the pre-Covid routine. In one of these sessions, my thoughts wandered off to some serious what ifs. What if there was no Covid-19 pandemic, meaning no disruption in air travels. What if in that alternate parallel world trajectory, there was a plane crash. But due to Covid-19 and the air travel restriction that followed, flights were cancelled, and that same plane never get to take off. So, while the people who had already booked the flight complained about ruined vacations, the inconvenience of trying to get refunded, they had no idea that the cancellation had just saved their lives. Mind blowing…

Anyways, once upon a time, in 2014, Lily had just ended her tour as a senior nurse. She had not reached retirement age yet, but she just had enough of the grueling hours which left her little time to spend with her 3 kids. Her eldest, her only girl, had just turned 13 that year. When one day, Lily first noticed her eldest wearing make up, she realised how much she had missed out on her children’s growing up years. She was envious of her husband, a stay-at-home dad, for having being able to be there through all the milestones. 

Lily wasted no time and the next day after her last day at work, she, her husband and kids flew to Malaysia for the much-needed family vacation. It was a trip that Lily had planned months earlier as a surprise to her husband and kids. Lily was over the moon and the kids were having a blast. They went to all the top tourist attractions there – Legoland, Genting Highlands, Malacca, you name it.

A week into their 2 weeks vacation, an idea popped up in Lily’s mind. Why don’t we fly to Beijing, she said. An excursion to China…that’s a great idea!, her husband said. The kids were all cheering in agreement. Lily went on the internet to book for their flight to Beijing. The plan was to go to Beijing from KL, spend 2-3 days there and come back to KL for their flight back to Brunei. Since all the upcoming afternoon flights to Beijing didn’t have seats available for 5 of them, Lily went on to book a midnight flight.

Lily excitedly announced to her husband and kids that their flight to Beijing had been booked for Saturday, in 3 days time, with departure time of 0035H arriving at 0630H. Upon hearing this, Lily’s middle child, 12 year old boy, said no no no no noooo way! One thing that Lily didn’t know at that time is that the boy is not a morning person. The husband knew this all too well because he had to deal with getting the boy up for school every morning. Don’t be ridiculous, Lily said. But the boy was dead serious, he totally protested and didn’t want to go, saying that he rather stay in KL alone. He spent the rest of the day sulking. Lily kept at the back of her mind that the whole trip was about strengthening her bond with her children, so she didn’t want to argue much about her son’s antics, but deep inside she was hoping that the boy would snap out of it and change his mind in the morning.

The next morning came and it was still a no from the boy. Lily found it a bit annoying but in the end she yielded to the boy’s protest and cancelled the booking.

Saturday morning came. It was 08 March 2014, Lily woke up around 9ish and switched on the TV. She was shocked to see what was on. Her jaw dropped. She looked like she had seen a ghost. She went to her middle son who was still sleeping, laid next to him and gave him a big hug. The boy was awaken by the hug and grumpily said “Arrrghhh mooooommm, please I want to sleep!”

The flight to Beijing that Lily had cancelled was MH370.