su & hao

It’s about my Grandfather.
He’s dead. He died recently, about 2 months ago.

It’s very queer to have him not be around although we don’t usually hang out or have an especially close relationship. I’m not his favourite grandchild, and I see him at most once a week, sometimes once a month. We seldom talk. If we do it’s me thanking him for an Ang Pao or him asking me or Ming something about the Chinese language. He’s interested in things like that, in China, in Politics, in Tradition.

Usually, he’s smiley when it comes to talking to me or Ming or any of his grandchild for that matter. He’s nice! He’s obliging and caring to us in a way, like a traditional man, not explicitly, but you know he is. You know because he didn’t like my job as a reporter, because he didn’t like me going to the Middle East, because he was worried that the place is unsafe, so he was glad my job ended. I know he cared in his unspoken ways. He didn’t tell me all that. He probably told my mom, and somehow I came to know. Most of his feelings, his thoughts were never told to me by him, I always just come to know. We really, hardly communicated yet we’re bonded by blood and we cared, somehow.

I respect my grandfather but he seemed to play a small part in the decisions I make in my life. Like what I want to study or what job I choose. I think he never felt that he had the power to change my decisions and he never did try. Sometimes when I think about it, he seemed to play such a small part in my life! Taking so little of my time! Yet I feel that he is an important person. It’s very contradictory.

Anyway, my grandfather is a very meticulous person. When the ambulance came for him, he insisted on dressing up for the hospital. He always dresses up. Not fancifully, but appropriately. On that day, I heard, he insisted on wearing his 2 layers of pants and because he’s so thin, that was a norm. The 2 layers of shirts were mandatory, of course. At the door step, he also feebly asked for his watch, refusing to leave without it. He also wore proper socks with his shoes. Everything was intact. Yes, he even took his umbrella.

At the hospital, the nurses gave us his belongings. It was HEAVY. His coins, his keys, his… stuff! He was a frail old man and he carried all that baggage around with him everyday. There were 3 tiny paper packets folded in old calendar-paper. They were probably about 2 cm in size and we were all dubious of what they were. Then we saw in neat handwriting, 班纳杜and another 陪自美(this one I’m not sure of the writing but it’s a kind of medicine for digestion) and one more, I forgot.
It was for that moment, rather funny. In the way the pills were so immaculately folded in calendar-paper and so well kept in his pockets as if they were prized possessions. He seemed like a very queer and funny man.
This old man insisted on bringing all his belongings, like a snail happily toting his shell, even if he was being rushed to the hospital.
There was a little comedy in that.

And then he passed away.

A short while after that we went to his flat to look at some of his belongings. Many things would be left for my Grandma to decide if they were to stay or to go. He had a little wooden table and a wooden stool (the stool now sits in Ming’s room). That was his work desk and it looked very simple, very modest. Before he retired, my Grandfather worked as a goldsmith and I think he spent many hours crouched over that wooden desk picking at necklaces and chains and repairing them. That I could imagine. What I didn’t imagine though, was that he had stacks of bus tickets on his desk. On the back of them, he scribbled in his laudable handwriting, many headlines from Lian He Zao Bao. Issues he wanted to ponder over sometime later. Things that people said that he wanted to remember. Names or quotes from famous people he thought were great. (Like MM Lee’s secretary, Mdm Yeong. I heard from my uncle that he admired her.) Issues like… I don’t remember clearly what I had seen there but probably things to do with China and Taiwan and laws implemented in Singapore. Things like that. He scribbled all this onto the back of used bus tickets. Did he want to recycle the bus tickets? Did he use them instead of a notebook or proper paper because he found them more portable? I don’t know but that is something that he did, and he did a lot of it.

Everything about my Grandfather was neat. He had everything ready for his death. The certificates were in place, the bank books. Everything that was needed for an easy settlement after his death was there and was well kept. He even wrote a will. That was the first time I had read something written by my Grandfather and it was indeed well written. Simple, straightforward and covered every aspect that we could think of. The language was very formal, I must say, it was very Chinese and that was very him.

Sometimes, he simply amused me because he was so old. Like when my cousin told me about the time my uncle nearly drove off when my Grandfather was getting into the car. As the car started, there he was this skinny little old man with one leg still outstretched and the car door still opened, hanging on to the bar above for his dear life. It was really funny just imagining that! I don’t know if it actually still sound funny, but when I imagine it, it is still. Or the time when he felt hungry but ran out of the bread he always brings around with him. It was so sudden and he was so hungry he was shivering. I don’t know. It’s just funny! This seems mean, but I’m not being mean. He amused me because I found him cute! I like to remember him that way, as being this funny without making an effort.

He was always busy though. You’d think a man of 90 years should be leading a very relaxed and slow paced life. That was not the case at all with my Grandfather. My Grandma said that he always complained about having not enough time.
别人有24小时，我也有24小时，为什么我的时间用得那么快？
That was his question. He was so busy he had no time to listen to a few Cantonese Opera cassettes that he bought. He said he couldn’t even spare that minute to put the cassette into the player. What was he busy with? I’m not very sure, but I know he reads the papers and that could take hours. He probably took naps and eating was also a slow event. I really cannot imagine anything else but there must be. There were things that he did everyday, things that were important to him.

I’m not ruminating about how I could have been a better granddaughter, forged a closer relationship with my Grandfather. It’s not like that. I like him the way he was with me and I like him enough the way I knew him to be. Although I cannot say for sure, I think he felt the same way towards me. I do feel curious though, of his youth and of his life.
Although we are not the paragon of Grandfather-granddaughter relationships, sometimes, I still do miss my Grandfather.

When I miss him, most of the time, I miss him for who I knew him to be.

Some of the time though, I miss him for the person I’ve never known him to be.