(:

Monday, June 9, 2008

The funeral of my grandmother is now over... no more rituals... no more of her... it seems as though yesterday when i was just the age of 9, where i would jump on the side of her bed, asking her to buy me an ice-cream whenever the ice-cream man comes around to our block... and though she had died, she still lives in our mind, as memories of great importance...

I still remember the time when i always liked to play with the fire at our ancestral cabinet... i did not know that it was unlucky and disrespectful at that age, so my grandmother will always stop me from doing that... but there i was, burning paper offerings for her, just right beside her lifeless body, half knowing that she was dead, but also half hoping that she would wake up and stop me from playing with fire like she always did years ago... but no, she did not wake, she laid there, as if trying to prove to me that she is dead, telling me to accept the reality of death, and never forget the power of it...

I had never been so blanked out... i cannot believe that my grandmother, so strong and active at her age, had died... leaving us on the cruel mortal world, whereas she goes to the other side... the side where death is the best thing that can happen... where all that are there is happy, friendly, and none of them are in need of anything...

The funeral was quite a tearless one... only my dad and auntie cried... many people asked me, why haven't i cried at all? all i told them was that i had a heart of stone... but the truth, was much more complicated... because i was dead a long time ago... not dead in the sense of the death of my grandmother... but dead in the sense that my childhood was taken away, together with my inner most emotions, like true sadness and happiness... here is a little question for my friends that is viewing this post now... ever seen me happy before? yes? well, how long did the happiness last for me? 10 minutes? an hour? this is because, i had lost my true happiness, the happiness u saw was only the mere amount of happiness i got... and that is what was left of it... nothing more, nothing less...

My cousin once said during the funeral, that after a person dies, the body is only like an empty shell after the person dies... there's no need to cry over something that won't redo itself... it is not as if my grandmother will relive again after seeing her, praying for her, or even burning offerings for her... i did not say anything about this line... but now i can...

You see... we do not do these things or rituals for nothing, or as though we have too much money on our hands... we do it because the deceased is of great memorial value to us... and had earn our respect and love though the course of his or her life... nothing and no one can replace or make up to the loss of the deceased... for he or she is special to us, as each of them are special in their own way...

And after dieing, the body is not an empty shell... it holds the limitless amounts of memories we have of them... and the scars of what the deceased had been through... this is also the reason why we cremate or bury them... because the memories can also go with them, destroyed with the fire...

Take for example... why do we sometimes see statues of important people? because it reminds us of the great things he or she had done... we are reminded of the great things he or she had done, because we do not know the person personally and the person has no sentimental value to us... but imagine, for example the son or daughter of Sir Stamford Raffles (the so called 'original founder' of Singapore) saw the statue of Sir Stanford Raffles... having fond memories of him, they are most likely to burst into tears... as they are reminded of the past that they had with him...

So... i would like to end this post with a little note for my grandmother...

I wish you have a great time up there... and please... wait for me to come... for my time might be almost up...

frm
mousey

Till death shall i know...