The ones you leave behind

The night before, Lee Hui and I were talking and I wondered what couldn’t granddad let go? He was home already, no longer in the hospital. My brother, Yeng Yee, and Yeng Hou’s sister, Yee Wen, had said their goodbyes through the phone from UK. Did Yee Wen ask granddad to wait for her?

Yeng Yee and Yee Wen are both working in Reading and Manchester respectively. They decided to come home even if they could not see the last of granddad. They reached Chemor past 10pm last night, in time for the rites in the last night of the wake.

Actually, granddad was indeed waiting for someone. While Lee Hui and I were in the hospital, a great-grand uncle of ours came to visit. He is granddad’s uncle. Granddad has been searching for this lost uncle for some time and they recently found each. Granddad finally let go moments after this great-grand uncle left. Though he is granddad’s uncle, he is only 84, two years older than granddad.

He looks like granddad. So I couldn’t look at him for long.

He also has the blue ring around the iris of his eyes, like granddad (like Sayuri of Memoirs of the Geisha). He came with his wife once to the hospital, once at home, and was there all three days of the wake. He lives on some other part of Perak state past Ipoh and they both took two different busses to get to Chemor.

I wonder what it is like to watch people around you die, one by one.

But I can tell you what it is like to eat and swallow while crying. I found out what it was like when I was about 14. I had told my parents I became a Christian and they both took turns to deride me and my faith- always at the dinner table. This time, though, it was not me. It was grandma.

I can tell you that the food tastes like nothing. You only taste the saltiness of your own tears.

I worry about grandma.

“Who is going to cut my nails now? I cannot lift my right arm from the fall the last time, you know. And ye-ye always turns on the hot shower for me because I couldn’t reach the heater”.

I cut her nails for her. And rubbed the thit-ta-yao (traditional Chinese medicine for aches) on her ankles and massaged her calves. But what when I am not there? And for how long can I do things like that? I do not have granddad’s devotion and faithfulness.