~Death can sneak up on you like a silent kitten, surprising you with it's touch and you have a right to act surprised. Other times death stomps in the front door, unwanted and unannounced, and makes it's noisy way to your seat on the sofa.~
April 30th, 2009. It is difficult to describe how I felt when the phone call came in at 2.20 pm today. At this time, a phone call from home could only mean one thing -- he has passed away. True enough, it has only been 20 minutes since he left us. It was a release from the excruciating torture of cancer I hear, and despite the grief I have to agree. He has not been at his best since his chemotherapy, and going blind in one eye probably made things worse. I remember hearing him say, 'this will be the last time I'm going through all of this', and it turned out to be true. When the cancer relapsed this time, there was no more treatment to be done. A few weeks ago he was already a dead man walking, and today, he left us all behind.
It is not too difficult to understand a person like my grandfather, yet I wouldn't say that I really knew him. He was the uneducated oddjob-guy; the guy who cuts the grass by the road side, piles bricks to build a house, and sprays insecticide to kill weeds. Until his death he still couldn't read a newspaper, and often had to rely on my grandmother to read it out loud for him every morning. My grandfather had the shortest of temper, and more often than not would blow his fuse at the most trivial of things. But he was respected by everybody, partly out of fear, and partly because he had such a domineering presence. I remember we wouldn't dare make too much noise in his house when he was in, for fear of incurring his wrath. Yet you couldn't read him like an open book. He was quick to judge, often filled with prejudice, but always having a conviction to follow through his argument. I believe he was brought up to follow a certain set of principles by my great-grandfather, and to live through the war with these set of principles intact is something very amazing.
But my grandfather showed his love to his grandchildren in a very different way. Every Sunday morning he would cycle to buy breakfast for all of us, and deliver it to our doorsteps. I remember him sometimes dropping into my primary school during recess to see me or my siblings. When we were young he would also plop us down on his lap when we were watching television together, and we would all take turns having a go at sitting on his lap. When we went on holidays or school trips he would always try to slip us some extra pocket money, usually through 'ang pow's from my grandmother, and was equally generous in rewarding good grades at school too.
It was obvious that my grandfather was immensely proud of us, and he never once bothered to hide his pride. Just before leaving for the UK, I was asked to fetch him to a shop to get his grass-cutter repaired. At the shop, he introduced me to all of the workers, proclaiming proudly that his elder grandson drove him to the shop in a BMW (which of course, belonged to my dad). During formal dinners he would always be dressed up patchily, but would make sure that we were outfitted properly as befitted the occasion. Come every Chinese New Year, an early 'ang pow' would come in for us to buy clothes. He balked at us wearing black and dark coloured clothes, sometimes muttering that it was only meant for funerals, and indeed now I am clad fully in black in respect of him.
I have always been amazed by his longevity despite being the least conscious about his own health. He chain-smoked, ate overly sweet and salty food and shunned any clinic or hospital unless he was in huge pain. Yet he lived until he was almost 70 (I'm not sure of his actual age). He always boasted that he out-lived my other grandfather, who passed away even before I was born, because he smoked, but one suspects this is not really the case. He didn't die of lung cancer though; My grandfather had cancer on his skull, but even after he started taking treatment he never stopped puffing away. I like to think that his body somehow got used to all that carcinogens and tobacco, and it would probably be worse if he tried to kick his addiction after more than half a century of smoking. My father long gave up on trying to advise him to quit. Instead, we would always buy back cigarettes from the airport for him whenever we took a trip overseas. I myself got him a portable ashtray when I was in Japan, but I doubt he uses it.
They will bury him on Monday, at the gravesite that he himself chose a few years ago. Even the 'feng shui' at the site is done by him, though I never knew where he got that knowledge from, nor how accurate it actually is. But then, we know better than to doubt him. Life is too short to be squandered over a person's own final resting place.~Zhongy~
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Monday 13 April 2009
Easter Monday
Eleanor Farjeon
In the last letter that I had from France
You thanked me for the silver Easter egg
Which I had hidden in the box of apples
You like to munch beyond all other fruit.
You found the egg the Monday before Easter,
And said. 'I will praise Easter Monday now -
It was such a lovely morning'. Then you spoke
Of the coming battle and said, 'This is the eve.
'Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon'.
That Easter Monday was a day for praise,
It was such a lovely morning. In our garden
We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard
The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve,
There are three letters that you will not get.
~Zhongy~
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