Posted under Growing up & Nostalgia
The death of a good friend’s grandma got me thinking about my own. She’s the only grandparent I have left after my grandfather, her husband, passed on in Nov last year. Thinking about life without her prompted me to drop by her place today, something I used to do weekly but which sheer laziness and this thing called life had stolen of late.
I don’t know if I’m in denial or if I’m just awfully dense. When I went to visit my granny today, I almost blurted out, “ah gong leh?”. (Where’s/How’s grandfather) That would have opened a huge can of worms, not because my grandma would be distraught, she has dementia and in her instances of clarity, is actually taking it alot better than the rest of us. It would have been the faux pax of the century as my aunty, who was very close to my grandfather, was sitting next to me.
Maybe we all deal with loss differently. My friend penned a beautifully heartwrenching post about his loss. It left me in tears not so because he’s such a sexy wordsmith, but because his pure grief resonated within me. I didn’t show it much during the wake or after but I don’t know if I have totally come to terms with it.
It’s funny how after the amazingly huge cry at the crematorium, after our tears have dried into crumpled balls of tissue in our clasped fists, we were able to troop back to the place where the wake was and have a meal together. This meal was like any other family gathering of ours, lots of laughter, gossiping, walking around poking fun at other people, carrying the babies and vying for their attention.
I haven’t cried since that day. I haven’t thought about him much except during mass when the priest reminds us to pray for the faithful departed. My dad and the rest of his siblings haven’t talked about my grandfather in a sad way. Christmas and CNY passed without tears, just a sign and a exclaimation of how it’s our first <insert occasion> my grandfather isn’t around.
— Everything above this line was written last evening —-
Maybe because of what I wrote last night (and didn’t publish) and this article which sounds like bogus nonsense, I dreamt of my grandfather last night. My immediate family and I were on our way to the cemetary (which is odd since he was cremated) to visit him and my brother got a phone call on his hp. It was my grandfather who told us that he was ok and filled us in on his life. None of us found it very odd as we turned the car around and gave him directions to the restaurant where we would be meeting the rest of the extended family for dinner to celebrate something or other (with 50+ people in the family, SOMEONE is always having a birthday).
Maybe it’s his way of assuring me in my dreams that he’s alright, that it’s ok not to feel alot. That I shouldn’t feel guilty that I don’t miss him more. I am happy for him in a very twisted way. He was so mobile and strong in the past, my grandfather of my childhood. Illness made him so dependant on others to do basic things and that physical pain was probably not as bad as the mental pain of being accused of having done many horrible things by the dementia plaguing my grandmother. Death took all this pain away, though it also took away my chance of having my healthy happy grandparents witness the next milestones of my life. My children will never know how wonderful their mom’s grandfather was. How he would get into a cab with my grandma, ladden with goodies, and surprise me at my place during school holidays. They will never see how much he loves them.
