In loving memory

Today marks the first anniversary of my grandmother's death. Below is a post from a previous incarnation of my private blog, written in the days following her departure. It's been edited for privacy purposes, not to mention a lack of punctuation.

I remember spending the day in tears, with this song on repeat.

I still think of her; I wish I could tell her about my life here, how she would love to be here, how the Gold Coast is a wheelchair friendly place.

* * *

No matter how much you expect it, how far ahead you perceive the future to happen, when a loved one dies, it doesn't fail to hurt. So even though I had completely no hopes of seeing Popo live past another couple of weeks, the news of her death came as a shock anyway.

In spite of knowing her all 23 years of my life, I never really knew too much about her past. Traditional Chinese families are a little like that. There was the added language barrier of her skeletal English and my faltering Cantonese. But her smiles and warmth never sent the wrong signals. The matriarch of my mother's side of the family, Popo had been adopted as a child and was "extremely sensitive" to being questioned about her origins. I never did learn much about it. Her slanted eyes and delicate nose and tiny, crooked mouth hinted as possibly more exotic origins. My mother and I continue to be mistaken as Japanese tourists until today, with amusing regularity.

Popo lived with my eldest uncle, Tai Kau Fu, in Ipoh for most of her life, at least as far as I'd known it. My grandfather had passed away many years before my conception, and as rumour had it, been a less than faithful husband, in a time where polygamy was a common practice. As a mother, she would give preference to her sons over her daughters, granting them a sense of superiority, which would preside even up til her funeral.

About eight years back, she visited my middle uncle, Yi Kau Fu, in an ill fated trip to Sydney. Yi Kau Fu had immigrated there earlier with his wife, and my grandmother was eager to see him, a son i suspect she especially favoured. Alas, she suffered a sudden but acute bout of necrosis to her lower legs. The late diagnosis resulted in semi-paralysis; the nerves had been damaged in the attack.

Popo returned to Ipoh in a wheelchair. I was still too young to have grasped how painful it must have been for her. My perception of senior citizens was somewhat restricted to my experience with Popo and my father's father, a man who seemed the epitome of a living fossil. He would later live beyond his ninth decade before calling it a day.

Quite soon after this development, Tai Kau Fu was diagnosed with liver cancer. the disease was in its advanced stage, leaving him with only about six months of time. With Popo in tow, he moved to KL, but the medical advancements did little help. In no time, the uncle who played the most pranks on all of us, was but a husk of a man. I watched him breathe his last, guilty in the memory of my eerily accurate premonition of his death 10 years earlier. But then again, he had always indulged a little heavily in his vices.

Popo moved in with Tai Kau Fu's daughter, my cousin sister. There, she remained, until another scare. Unfortunately, I remember little of this, except combing her hair in the hospital, and doubting the family's fatalistic opinions of her health. nonetheless, my youngest uncle, Sam Kau Fu, brought her home to his condominium, out of filial piety.

While his Bangsar condominium was undoubtedly more luxuriant than her previous accommodations, Popo was unhappy at the lack of privacy and Sam Kau Fu's son, my cousin's, indifference to her.

Finally, two weeks before her death, Kai Ma, my aunt, noticed a strange slump in popo's posture. The doctor diagnosed it as a silent stroke. Popo was hospitalised once again. The strokes kept coming and by the time I visited her, the left half of her body was no longer mobile. Fearing possible choking, she was fed "artifically vanilla flavoured" gunk through the tube.

I didn't think she would leave us so soon then, though I thought it would be for the best. M grandmother loved two things in life: shopping and eating; she was always feeding us. Or at least trying to. Heck, I even remember her curiousity about penguin flesh during a screening on National Geographic! ("I wonder if they're tasty?") but necrosis left her wheelchair bound, and at best, she could hobble on a walker. The crowded KL malls were no longer an option. And now, even eating was impossible.

Poor Popo! Another more severe stroke struck her a few days later. The doctor grimly told us to take her home. My tired relatives fussed about her, making every effort to comfort her. She laid in a special undulating mattress that reduced bedsores, with a variety of pillows and bolsters arranged under her immobile limbs. Every so often, someone would remind her of so-and-so being present. In between attempts to pull her feeding and breathing tubes out, she would hold my hand, her grasp limp and her eyes rheumy and swollen. She could no longer speak, only unintelligible sounds escaped her cracked lips. We stayed for a while and I kissed her feverish forehead goodbye.

She passed away a day later. I was not present to witness her dying moments, but most of the rest were there. I believe their presence was a great source of comfort to her. We suspect she only held out for so long to wait for my uncle's brief return from australia. In her less than lucid moments, she would cry his name out aloud, audible even through her stroke-induced slur.

I pray that she's in heaven now, no longer in pain, her limbs supple and pliant. Like what my brother said, "She's the only grandma we've ever known." I'm a grandorphan now. I will remember her for her onion omelette, her weekly attempts to give me MYR50 (she once threatened to stuff the money in my bra), her liver spotted hands, her vanity (I think her hairdressing bills way surpassed mine), her offer to pay for my "stretching treatments" ("Jan, you would be so much prettier if you were just a bit taller") and most of all, her quiet, comforting, matriarch-ly presence.

ANG KIM SUAT
02/07/1921 - 05/05/2008