the quarter light

This is not a eulogy because my Dad asked me to say something at my grandma’s funeral – but I didn’t. I felt relief when someone else was on the podium. It is what it is.

I had so much to say – but I just wanted time to arrange it. This is a eulogy which would not have been appropriate, fair. It’s subjective. Incomplete. A reconstruction of memory. A hypothesis, which I am proving faultily:

I didn’t want anybody to hear it. I wanted somebody to hear it.

–

To be honest, Mama was… singular. Aren’t all grandmas? I was kind of shocked when I found out that her generation was called the Silent generation. Probably because she was so… not silent.

Mama was prickly. She was probably like, secretly racist? But like, she also couldn’t help herself from connecting. One minute I feel like she would be saying something offensive, the next minute, she’d be sharing fruit with someone from the group that she’d just been airing her opinions about? Maybe I’m idealising. But the point I’m trying to make is that. Idk, she would still let people wriggle in. Albeit reluctantly.

Maybe she was just a product of her time, like she knew what she was supposed to be doing – favouring sons, voting for the PAP, being the submissive wife- but here she was, being a resistance runner, going cycling on a group date, making sure her daughters went to school, booing LKY when he came to campaign (until he proved himself, ha ha ha). She did everything with aplomb – steaming chiffon cakes, steaming more chiffon cakes, painting, weeding, rearing fish, disciplining the dog (in a harsh but teasing kind of way). (I found this video of her while combing through the WhatsApp archives of her commanding Hugo to sit – and when he disobeyed her, she went “bad dog!” and then bent down and tried to blow in his face to annoy him. From like 1 meter away.)(And then I couldn’t find the video ever again, even after like 2 nights of searching. So maybe it was another wink from her/God.)

But I guess she needed to be this strange combination of silent but rebellious, to resolve never to be married again. To support, and then to seek out, her children on her own.

–

I started crying when I told her that I was going to Australia to study – probably because both of us knew that this was the last time that we would really get to be with each other – as we were. It was a saying goodbye, really, and we both knew and didn’t know it. All she said to me was, no need to cry. And that made me feel sad but okay at the same time. It just was what it was. Life was this way. This was her way.

–

Mama had had dementia for awhile, and she’d deteriorated suddenly over the pandemic. She went to stay with my aunt after living in our place for about 20 years. Another form of saying goodbye. It was strange to see her room empty. Life moved on and I didn’t think too much of it.

She kept slipping away, further and further.

In the months before she passed, I kept wanting to sleep with the door closed. I used to sleep with the door half-open and the fan on. But I felt a bit spooked, like someone was standing outside and looking in. I know I was being paranoid, but it still helped me feel better to do so.

And I wonder whether that was her. I mean, I know I’m probably just making it up a little. But you know, it would totally be her way. Even when she was getting much older, she would still doggedly climb all the way up the stairs, in her sleeping socks, just to check that I was home – which was kind of spooky (because her bangle would clang kind of ominously on the staircase railing + she would rasp not uncreepily “You’re home….”) and also scary in the sense that she could totally have fallen and also heartwarming cos, your grandma just risked her life to check if you were home.

Anyway, that feeling has kind of gone away ever since her funeral. On the morning that she passed, my phone alarm inexplicably rang at 5:30am even though I was sure I’d set it at 6:30am. So. I dunno. I heard she passed around 5ish in the morning. I like to think that was one more way that she looked for me.

I don’t dream of her anymore either.

–

One more image of my Mama and I think I’ll go too. Her dementia was getting worse when I came back from uni on summer break. She no longer climbed up the stairs to check if I was home. Her TV was on for longer and she was taking naps more frequently. I thought that her days of worrying about us were sort of over. So on the morning that I was going back to Melbourne, I was so shocked to see that she’d woken up too.

Maybe she couldn’t sleep. Maybe she’d set an alarm because she knew that’s when I would be leaving. She wasn’t going to come to the airport with me. But as I got into the car at the front of the house, instead of staying in the house to eat her breakfast like she always did, she came and stood in the porch. The morning was still dark, and the porch light was behind her. All I could see was her shadow – her stout frame, her pouf of hair, one bangled hand on her walking stick. Waiting. The car pulled away and I looked back. Wishing for something I couldn’t put words to.

谢谢嫲嫲。我想念您的萝卜糕。别忘记我！我们总有一天一定会见面。