Life of a yummy baby ... and now there are 2!!!!!

Death, like love, is a funny thing. No matter how we prepare ourselves for it, we cannot escape the feelings of loss, grief and sorrow when it happens to our close ones. In one week I lost both my grandmothers .

Last Thursday, my maternal grandmother passed away in the hospital. She was 78. Two days after, my paternal grandmother who was 88 passed away at home. As I am the second-eldest (on my dad's side) and eldest grand-daughter (on my mum's side) to my grandmothers, I consider myself very fortunate to have had many happy memories with them during my childhood days. I am particularly closer to my parental grandmother because we lived with her for most of the time, up till her twilight years.

I have always remembered my paternal grandmother to be a healthy and independent lady who never seem to suffer from any major illness or looked the least bit frail, even in her 80s. The year when Morgan was born, her lungs suffered from some pneumonia-like attack with the detection of some malignant growth on one side of her lungs. Treatment for her pervasive cough carried on for a year and a half to no avail. Few months before she left us, she continued to cough relentlessly and had lost a lot of weight. Her mobility was reduced from using a walking stick independently to needing a domestic helper to assist her when she became bed-ridden in the last few weeks. By that time both sides of her lungs had suffered the spread of cancerous cells. She was too old and too weak to fight back the illness or undergo major surgery. Still she held on painfully to each day to see us return even as her cough seemed to draw her closer to her last breath. And I am so glad we made it back to see her this time with Morgan.

As she had only 2 sons, we held the wake at the void-deck of my elder uncle's house. It was going to be a family affair that would last 5 days, 4 nights. People would come to visit during this period to pay their last respects to our granny before she was cremated. During the night, our family members would have to stay up to keep guard - of cats jumping over the coffin, which was believed to make the corpse sit up. I am not sure how true this is. According to her wishes, we held Buddhist rites to help granny on her journey in the afterworld. And all the family members would be busy folding paper money which we believe would serve granny well, after they have been burnt alongside the paper house and other paper chests of treasures.















The most touching scene for me was when my grandmother's "kaki's" or neighborhood friends, a group of them, came round to pay their last respects at the alter. Their presence meant so much. My grandmother, though quiet, was held in high regards by others in which we, the family, have never quite seen. We met some of her old friends - people who knew her before she got married. People who told us how she had to look after my grand-dad, her husband, who was then sick and dying. These old friends carry with them some knowledge of the past that were not revealed to us. From them, we began to see our grandma in a different dimension. We realised what a strong and dignified woman she had always been.


My grandmother's funeral has brought to our families and relations - a time for reflecting and bonding. Though we feel sad at the loss, we know that she's in a better place without suffering.