She was 62 when she passed, and she was shorter than me. Her hair was generally frizzy, dyed a maroon colour, and she walked with a slight limp. She liked to wear two layers of clothing, a long-sleeved shirt (typically striped) over a polo T. It never made sense to me because the Malaysian weather was always so hot and she complained about the heat every time she came to sit in Winson’s car.
Her birthday was Nov 13, same with my Kung Kung. That’s something they shared in common. She would say that she preferred not to make a big deal about her birthdays, not to spend so extravagantly on dinners and meals. But she does love going out. On the days when we met up for meals or to spend quality time, you could tell she really enjoyed those times being with people and being surrounded by loved ones. She was in her element when she was at large gatherings. At Nathaniel’s wedding, she enjoyed being the centre of attention when she was the one receiving the drink during the tea ceremony. She gave him advice, the kind of aunty advice that makes you both amused and exasperated - and she probably knew deep down with glee how her remarks would invoke such a response.
What would strike you the most about her was her ability to chatter non-stop. It was extraordinary how she could sustain an hour-long conversation on her own, with the other party barely getting two sentences out the entire time. The first time I met her, she downloaded to me her complete family history, about her family of seven sisters and three brothers - all within the hour. Having to listen to her attentively, it had been draining for me. But I always looked back at the first encounter with a sense of gratitude. I had been really intimidated by having to meet her. But when she came - loudly chattering away, an aunty remark for most everything - it filled me with a sense of warmth.
It was hard for us in 2018. She was diagnosed with a cancer tumour, and it was a hard journey for all of us. Yet there is something about adversity that unites family members with disparate lives, hectic schedules and who usually display lukewarm complacency towards each other. There was now a goal to come together for. There was a mission under which to rally together. That experience of sending her for doctors’ appointments, surgery and chemotherapy sessions - it was a tough grind. There were a lot of moments where tempers flared and resentment brewed to an explosive point. Me myself. I too struggled with feeling frustrated, getting easily irritated. Yet, the experience had bound us so closely. Having to fight this struggle together - it made our relationship so intertwined and interdependent. We would stay at the hospital for a few hours on end, waiting for doctors. Just me and her. It felt strange at first. Yet familiarity grew. Through unextraordinary moments like these, an extraordinary kinship was forged. We got through the first recurrence with a kind of victory.
After those sessions, we would sometimes go to Strawberry Fields in PJ Old Town, or the Pappa Rich there, for dinner or lunch. It was so nice to spend time together, but yet it was so tiring as well. After spending four hours at the hospital together, my introverted self is crying for relief. More so, when her chatty self doesn’t stop talking. I’m happy with having meals together. But I get cranky when she asks me to bring her to run errands. Sometimes I would get annoyed at why she would tell me to go here and there (without asking me a day before). She would call me in the middle of the workday too, and asks why I did not pick up her call earlier. She sends me a lot of text messages as well, throughout the day. I am terrible at replying, but it was so cute to see her type “ha. Ha. ha” in an SMS. And strangely, I now want to be annoyed by her again.
Whenever we saw her, she would load up our cars and room with so MUCH stuff. Bags and bags of clothes, bags, snacks, and soft toys she knit herself. Wrapped in countless layers of plastic. The amount of items really shocked me. There were clothes that aren’t really my style - and soft toys that I wouldn’t really use. For instance, she wanted to have Winson and I prop up a rather scary-looking pair of dolls for our bridal car - which we said no to. The amount of items given to us, to me - it can be rather extreme.
But this is emblematic of who Mum is as a person. For her, there was no such thing as a middle ground. It’s either you go all the way, or you don’t do it at all.
I still have the ten boxes of Belvita she passed me, in my room. She knew I liked the cookies, and she gave them to me.
I think the times she really enjoyed spending with us were those when we took family trips together or when we went to watch a movie together. We watched Crazy Rich Asians together, and we had gone to Cameron Highlands and Penang together. We had talked so much together as a family, the four of us taking the long, winding road up to Cameron. One of her anecdotes caught us by surprise and made us burst out laughing. What we thought was a nostalgic recounting of her village life growing up in Alor Setar turned into a mischievous confession of how she accidentally killed a baby chick.
She’s a mother to me. We would get irritated at each other. We would make time to do activities together. We would be complacent and too comfortable with each other. We would miss each other on days we don’t see each other. In the two short years we have known each other, she treated and saw me as her daughter - nothing less.
She meant so much to me, and I’m certain the feeling was mutual. On the same day we rushed over to her place when we found out we were losing her - I found the Christmas gift she meant to give me in her apartment. A picture of Winson and my wedding registration day - made into a glass souvenir tied up neatly with a ribbon. She had also made a glass souvenir of the card I made for her 60th birthday.
I want to wish away this empty hole in my life where her presence used to occupy. I want to wish away the guilt as well. The guilt of not having cared for her properly, when she had cared so deeply for us. The guilt of not enquiring more carefully about the recommendation for chemotherapy, about her state of health. Of not being wise in managing her health. The regret of not being able to have the Christmas Eve meal with her as we had planned, and that she had been so excited about.
I’m glad that she knew God and that she was trusting in Jesus right to the end. This loss is so sudden, however. And I’m still trying to grasp it, if I ever can.
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REFLECTION: I once told a friend that writing was like torture. He thought it was amusing, and perhaps to some, it seems peculiar that the writing process could be described as such. But I continue to be struck by how Eugene O'Neill's wife, Carlotta, described his experience writing one of his finest plays: “When he started Long Day’s Journey, it was a most strange experience to watch that man being tortured every day by his own writing. He would come out of his study at the end of a day gaunt and sometimes weeping. His eyes would be all red and he looked ten years older than when he went in in the morning".
That process of staring at life's adversities, of bare-facedly staring at your personal brushes with pain and loss - is that not torture? And what is even more torturous, is to allow yourself to be subsumed by them and to concretise that experience into words. Yet writing it out - that process keeps you sane.
I used to marvel at Tennyson's poem for his friend Arthur Hallam. He spent 17 years composing In Memoriam, and I used to wonder at how one could have been so affected by death to have a long, sustained need for such an outpouring of grief. But after experiencing for myself the pain of being robbed of people dear and beloved, it makes a whole lot of sense. No one ever “gets over it” or “moves on”, so to speak. Although life resumes and moments of profound happiness are still generously given by God, you can never fully erase that imprint that person has left on your mind, nor lose the deep affection you have for someone who was so embedded in your life’s monumental moments and unextraordinary routines.
ENDS
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