Goodbye, Grandma

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This belonged to my grandmother. This was the pair of scissors she used 60 years ago as a seamstress to earn money to feed her family of nine children. The sundry shop my grandfather was running wasn’t doing well. There had been times when they couldn’t make the RM90 rent and were evicted. It was a tough life.

My grandmother passed away today. She had been in a critical condition in the hospital for over a month and her heart stopped today at 7am. They couldn’t revive her.

I’m now in her room in my uncle’s home. Everything is so familiar – familiar because they’re the same things that used to be in my grandparents’ old home years ago when I was a small kid. The old wooden cupboard with the stained mirror on one door, all her clothes neatly folded inside. A collection of short-sleeved button-down shirts and long pants, in every colour imaginable. Red was her favourite. The cupboard is lined with newspapers, just like she used to do years ago. Two small tables hold an assortment of items, one of which is a plastic container with a bottle of half-finished talcum powder, ointment for joint pain and mentholated balm. There are two photo albums with pictures of everyone, each picture carefully slipped into the transparent pocket. I wonder if she did all that herself and if she looked at the pictures whenever she was alone or feeling sad. Some of those pictures I’d never seen before. In the drawer is her passport – the pages are empty. Next to her passport is a picture of herself, nicely laminated. This is the one she’d told my aunt to use for her funeral. And there are bags of medicines – painkillers to alleviate the constant pain she had from her knee cap operation years ago, sleeping pills to help her go to sleep, all sorts of pills she’d diligently take every day. They’re all packed up in a small plastic bag. I recognise that bag; it’s the one she carried with her everywhere she went. I used to be amazed that she could read the doctor’s handwriting – as unintelligible as it was to the rest of us – and knew exactly which pills were meant to be taken when, how many times and for what.

I can’t describe the feeling of being in her room just a few hours after she’d gone. The first word that comes to mind is poignant. There’s just something very sad about going to the hospital and then, having your things come back without you.

I know she’s old and everyone’s time must come. I know we should be celebrating the life she’d led. There’s hope after death. She will always be alive in our hearts. She’s with God now. She’s no longer suffering. We’ll meet again. Blah blah blah and all that jazz. I know all that. But for now, I feel sad. I feel really sad because she’d had such a hard life and now, just like that, it’s all over. Nothing left but a few old photo albums, a cupboard of clothes and some half-empty bottles of medicines. Of course, she has a family that loves her dearly and I know most people would say that’s all that matters, but I still can’t help wishing that things had been a little different for her … a little easier, a little better.

Goodbye, grandma. We love you.

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Tags: death, grandmother, life, loss