Terrible, sometimes, how some things tend to affect you.
Over ninety years of age- her bones thinner than a bamboo clothes pole and so frail her body seemed to heave with effort for every gasp of air.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a real dead body.
Of course, I’ve seen plenty dying and dead people in films, documentaries… But to see it in the flesh; a lifeless, un-breathing figure, it really is something else. Fascinating? Curious? Plain sad? I don’t even know the right answer myself.
As I watch my teary Grandma sitting by Great-Grandma’s bedside, her eyes cloudy and her voice choking lightly as she held back her tears, she chants the mantra incessantly, as if guiding her departed mother into the other world. She tries to be strong. My aunt steps forward towards my Great-Grandmother’s bed with an extended arm, but Grandma quickly snaps at her to not touch her, as if Great-Grandma’s spirit would feel bothered by my aunt’s touch.
Great-Granny merely lies quietly on the bed, no, definitely not looking as if she had simply been asleep, for it looked like her last breath had been a painful one. Her neck stretched slightly with her mouth gaping slightly open, revealing her small, gray teeth. Her eyes remain shut with her creased, droopy eyelids draping lightly over her blank and listless eyes which I recall from her days at Tan Tock Seng hospital. Her hands are cupped against each other, holding a position a statue Buddha holds, as seen in many temples. Her body is small- so small I imagine it being crushed by the mere air she breathed every moment before her death. Her legs are so bony and thin I could easily compare its size to my arm. Or her own wrinkled, fragile arms, even.
It was too miserable a sight.
As my mom started to tear, Grandma looks her in the eye and instructs her not to cry. At that, I immediately feel a surge of tears sting my eyes. Here she was, my Grandma, her much-adored mother lying dead next to her, and she wants to make everyone believe- even herself- that we all had to move on and there was no point in tears shed. To have anyone feel like that at anytime about their loved ones, it just feels so… bad. I can’t think of any other word for it. How could anyone say such things about their own mother without feeling hurt themselves?
I step towards my Grandma and placing a hand on her petite shoulders, I ask her if she is okay. A most original question, no? Of course, she turns to me and trying to smile, she says yes. That only wrenches my heart more. She returns to her chanting as my hand leaves her shoulder, gazing sadly at Great-Grandmother’s paled face, her voice choking up again as she chants, while the rest of the family stands in the room, just watching quietly. I think I know what those people were thinking when they associated silence with death. I wish I could’ve taken a photo of the scene, and another one of how I saw my grieving grandma and her deceased, much smaller mother whom lay motionless on the stiff bed.
I’d blogged about her before in my personal blog, but I decided to write here today to share my first experience at one such solemn event where it wasn’t the dead person whom affected me directly, but where everyone’s reactions of the event around you becomes your reason to cry along with them.
Cherish what you have today, people, because you’ll never know what you get to keep tomorrow.
Rest in peace, ‘Lao Ma’.
