A Life Almost Forgotten

Everybody naturally has 4 grandparents, two maternal and two paternal. Some people live into adulthood with all their grandparents still around, some never have the chance to meet anyone of them. Most people fall in between, knowing just one or two of them for awhile when they were young.

My maternal grandmother lived a hard life. She came down from China alone, and lived for most of her life in Malaya in poverty without any relatives. As I knew her, she was a bitter woman with a caustic tongue, a trait somewhat passed down to my mom and me. In her later years, she suffered near-total deafness, and spoke very little. In fact in the 18 years I knew and lived with her, she hardly spoke to me, although she brought me up in the early years. I guess the adage is true, “if you do not have anything good to say to someone…”

She was a chain smoker. And she only smoked one type of fag, Signal brand. I don’t think you can find that brand anymore. As a result, she perpetually suffered from horrible cough and other related ailments.

As I think back now, the only times I remember her smile and laugh is when she used to play cards with her best friend in Batu Gajah, Perak.

She watched silently as her husband fade away in old age and death at 91, and she herself passed on in silence and alone in our her room, nearly 80.

Because she never really talked to me much, she brought with her to the grave a treasure trove of memories, sights, distant faces, broken hope and dreams in her life.

I would have loved to hear about her childhood in China, her friends, her sojourn into a faraway land, her wonderful stories of bringing up 2 children.

In life we make our own choices and live by them, and sometimes these choices are predetermined and we just have to accept them.

But to die alone is one of the greatest travesties in life.