I've written about my granny sporadically over the past 2 years, mostly when / because she is ill or hospitalised...
But the past 3 weeks, when she was admitted to hospital twice, and in quite serious condition at that, I just didn't know what to say to be able to blog about it anymore...
In a way, seeing her in hospital, semi-conscious, fed through a tube, so gaunt her temples were sunken, with the skin on her lips peeled, speech so slurry no one could decipher what she was saying, no one could reasonably want her to continue to such a state...
I saw her the night before she passed away... unconscious, heaving as she was breathing from the oxygen mask, with the pulse-oximetry meter moving up and down sometimes... worse then the week before, when she at least had the energy to use her hands to try to pick at her itchy eyes, and we had to use the hospital mittens to stop her from doing that...
And when I got the call that she had passed away, I was just done with BKT lunch at the Keppel Road place... it's just that dread everytime your cellphone gets an sms or call, and just don't want to pull ure handphone out for fear that it will be that dreaded call or sms...
I've written about her in various parts of the blog before, but my most vivid memory about my granny is when I was a kid of maybe 5, and staying in the chinese kampung... she'd troop me to the provision shop down the hill maybe 40 paces from our place, and buy me 2 siew mai on the enamel place, seat me on the old wooden bench and force it down my throat...
The house we stayed at had a papaya tree, a banana tree, and a whole lot of rambutan trees in the gated garden behind, which for some reason, I don't really recall venturing into... and of course, we had 2 geese, one of which I called ai(1)-ai(2) for the sound they made...
I have some memories of my granny feeding me, especially congee with minced fish and the usual kids' porridge stuff... and of course, as a kid, I'd resist part of the food, and she'd have to find all sorts of ways to convince me to eat them, like simulating that my mouth was a dumpt-truck and she was dumping all the rubbish into me... stuff like that...
I remember the hedge which served as the fence to our house, and the lawn the size of a sepak-takraw court...
And I guess the second most vivid memory was her bringing me to Thomson Yaohan once in a while... back when there was the bakery, and I'd love the hot dog buns, which I still have a soft spot for... and I think there used to be a mini-train track at the atrium there, and she'd let me have a go at it once in a while...
And when I was around 6 or 7, my parents took over care of me at our place in West Coast, and granny continued to stay in the kampung... I'm sure I must have continued to see her at least once a week, but I vaguely remember that when she left, I cried and cried and cried the first few nights when I slept with my parents..
Come to think of it, she's not been lucid for quite a long while already... I can't really remember when she still had her memory about her, but I think that for the last 2 years, she'd not really talk about the old days, and whilst she vaguely remembered who I was, she'd ask the same questions, like whether I was working or married, over and over again... I'd answer yes / no, and she'd say the teochew equivalent of "good; may the goddess of mercy bless you".... we'd laugh about it, and be prepared for the same question 3 minutes later...
Objectively, my granny could be a tyrant to her daughters-in-law, etc., but she treated me really well... but as a kid growing up, you'd pick up the things that other people said about her... for a while, I was afraid of drinking the coffee in her house because one of my aunts / my mom would swear that she placed a hex on the people who'd drink her coffee, e.g. my dad...
when my third uncle, whom she used to stay with, passed away, my dad bought a small flat for her to stay in... for 5 days a week, she'd spend it with only the maid in the house... and for some reason, she was not really a fan of going downstairs to the void decks to talk to the other old people, even though she was quite mobile... I remember a time when she'd still watch the television, because I distinctly recall that my dad will stick little bits of tape on the remote control to help her remember the on/off switch and the chinese tv channel, but come to think of it, I've not seen her watch tv for at least a year plus...
whenever we visited her, and this was a time when she was still lucid, the one thing she was sure to do was to offer us a drink... this was whether it was at my third-uncle's place or the flat she stayed in... almost always Yeo's chrysanthemum, although it was half-half with soya bean milk at my late uncle's place...
The day she passed away, when I went to her place, the saddest moment was when I walked into her flat and saw her things there... the kitchen with food and ingredients still around, her wheelchair and clothes... the same bed and bedsheet i used to sleep on during the visits, which admittedly got boring as I grew older...
And you know what? I think one of, if not the most, saddest moments during this past week was seeing my granny's maid lay flowers on the coffin this morning... I mean, my granny was just about the only person she was 5 days a week, and lucid or not, she cared for my granny... and I'm sure she must have left very left out / alone this week, cos she didn't always know what was happening as no one seemed to have the time / bothered to tell her... she'd be upstairs, sometimes, alone, making coffee or cleaning up, whilst the rest of us had relatives we could at least talk to... many times, I saw her sitting along at the edge of the void deck, looking at nothing in particular... and I know that she misses my granny to some degree cos she wept when she laid the flowers on the coffin, and when she saw my granny's photo being placed in the temporary altar in the temple...
tho it was hilarious seeing her (an indonesian muslim) hold a joss stick in offering, and wash her face with flower-water together with my relatives...
anyways, she's with us for the time being... which means I no longer have to be the one to wash the cars!
now that my granny's gone, what's seems for certain is that my extended family will no longer be meeting at her place for chinese new year... some of the already tenuous strings that bind us will quickly unravel, and I'm sure there will be some cousins, etc. I really won't see much of, as just about the only time I see them are CNY and my granny's birthday...
guess that's it for now... I'm sure there's a lot more somewhere in my head, but I'll just have to let them slowly resurface...
And, thanks to all of you for your very kind words and thoughts during this difficult time... I'm really grateful to you, and to those of my real-life friends who did so much for me, like YT who rushed to the crematorium shortly after she landed in Singapore this morning... again, many thanks...
But I remember this guy... called Ciao! in the Italy 1990 World Cup, when I was in Sec 2... and I distinctly recall asking my then-classmate Jonathan to help me buy Ciao! acryllic key-chains - mine was green, with the white and red bits printed on... think at least 1/3 of the boys in my class had one...
