Death is inevitable. It is a part of life. Though it is something that we know of and expect, it is still a very hard fact to accept. However, to quote my favourite bible verse, “to live is Christ and to die is Gain”, death is not necessarily a terrible thing. Yes, we’re sad to lose a loved one but we should also be happy that they have gone to a much better place and we should celebrate the years that they had lived in this world and the time we shared together. As a school band member, I’ve been to quite a number of funerals. It never occurred to me that I will be on the other side of the funeral anytime soon. Well, I had been on the other side of the funeral when my paternal grandfather passed away more than a decade ago. But, I was still young then and I didn’t really understand what was going on. My grandfather passed away recently (mom’s side) and for the first time, I was able to wrap my head around the whole funeral thingy. It wasn’t an overly sombre affair, there was some light moments. One of my cousins was asked to give a eulogy (i guess it’s because she’s the only PhD holder among us). She asked me to give her a sentence describing my grandfather. Honestly, I had a hard time coming up with even a sentence but I did. Everybody just assumed that I had the most memories about my grandfather as I’ve stayed with my grandparents ever since I was born. But sadly, it’s not exactly true. Yes, I have been with them for as long as I live but most of the memories that I had was all post-Alzheimer. They are not exactly fond memories. Nevertheless, I do have fond memories of my grandfather, it all occurred when I was just a child, can’t really remember them clearly. I didn’t know my grandfather very well. All I can remember is an old man, without much memory, lying in bed, yelling out profanities, crying, sad. It’s sad that only after his passing that I found out so much about him, the real him before Alzheimer took him away. During the wake service, my uncle (the youngest one) told stories about my grandfather and all the memories they shared. It’s only then that I learned so much about my grandfather, what a wonderful man, father and grandfather he is. It’s really sad. My grandfather’s death was so unexpected, like tsunami. My mom went to visit him on Saturday and he was perfectly fine. The next day, my mom received a call early in the morning that my grandfather was rally really ill. Since nobody knows what to do, he was sent to the Manjung hospital. There, not even the doctors know what is wrong with him. Their best assumption was that he suffered a stroke. Even that theory was inconclusive. Actually until now I’m still not exactly sure what the c.o.d is. Everything just went downhill from there. My grandfather passed away at midnight (right on the dot), after all his organs started to shutdown. I wasn’t there went he took his last breath, but I was there the whole morning watching life slowly fleets away from him. I was praying hard for him not to die as I know my mom and grandmother will have a very hard time dealing with it. It was really a hard thing to see as he was feeling so uncomfortable and suffering. All these happened so quickly, there’s hardly time to absorb all these in. One moment my family was happily flying to Singapore, next the maid ran away and my grandfather was sent to the old folks home and in a blink of an eye, he passed away. All these happened in a week. It still feels a bit surreal. All we can do now is move on.
