Tuesday... 21 March was rather uneventful in the morning by any standard... Grandma opened her eyes again every now and then but only a little bit. Her breathing is slower, shallower... The only thing I noticed that is different about her today is that when we tried to move her body to a different side every two hours, she stopped being bothered.
Usually when we turn her, she will frown and show that she is uncomfortable at being moved about but today, she is just "asleep" in whichever position. She stopped making any noises and I saw her lips move... looks like she is trying to chant nam myo ho ren ge kyo...
Seems like grandma is gone but at the same time still holding on... I kept telling her that it is ok to go and that we will take care of ourselves... I asked her if she had anything else that is holding her back and I tried to join with her... I realized I was holding on to her too and did lots of letting go again...
I think also, it seems like grandma felt very bu gan yuan to just leave like that. But as we joined... I think she started to let go of that thinking and emotion too.
By the evening, Ace finished school and came by. I let Max and Ace spend some time alone with Laoma and Max suggested that Ace do a dance for her... so he found some funky music and Ace started dancing... He did quite a long dance.. for about 5 minutes... Little did we know that this will be his very last dance for her.
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| Ace dancing for laoma... |
We went for dinner and went home and went about our daily lives. At around 9pm that night, my sister sent a message to our family group chat and informed us that the Dr came to visit grandma...
The dr said that grandma's BP was very low at 114. He said that if her BP continued to drop below 100, it will be a matter of 24-48 hrs before she passes on.. He also mentioned that her pneumonia has gotten worse and that she will likely take longer and longer and longer breathes till she breathes her last.
I was thinking that Grandma can likely last a little longer since in the afternoon when we measured her BP, it was 106 and it went up again. My cousin in Australia was due to be home on Thursday and I was thinking perhaps she might just get a chance to see grandma one last time...
But by 11, my aunty sent us a message that grandma's legs have gotten cold and her breathing is more shallow. Her BP reading hit an all time low of 90. That sent us into a frenzy.... Me and Max decided we will leave Ace at home and go to grandma's house immediately....
When we arrived, Grandma's BP had gotten a little higher...
I looked at grandma... and thought that she still seemed ok. Her breathing was as slow and as shallow as it had been when I left her at 6pm in the evening. If you put your hand on her, you could feel the whole bed jerk as she breathed in because that was how much effort it took her to breath and it breaks my heart to see her like that... As I reached out to touch her feet, I noticed her feet had gone cold. The bottom of her left foot near the toes and near the heel had turned a shade of purple that you only see in people who have froze bite... It was worrying as my second uncle told us previously that usually if a person's feet goes cold slowly to their knees, they are certain to be leaving soon.
My aunty, dad, mum, sis, Max and me sat around grandma and started chanting for her... My cousin, Suan arrived and chanted... somewhere around 12 plus, my mum suggested that Max go home so that he can keep Ace company and so Max went home.. we sat there and chanted and because I had to wake extra early that day to bring Ace to school to prepare for his Earth Day dance performance, I was really tired... we chanted and chanted... and I suddenly woke to realize that I had fallen asleep while chanting... I touched grandma's feet, it felt less cold and the normal colouring seemed to be returning to her feet too..
I realized that my mum, who had been staying over for the past few nights had also fallen asleep while chanting and so my aunty suggested that we all go an take a rest.
We went out to the living room and put mattresses on the floor and slept.
At around 6am in the morning, I heard noises of my parents waking and deciding to go home because they had to get Cay ready for school. My sis had to get ready for work too and so they said goodbye to grandma and left. My sis said that when she went in to say goodbye, grandma's breathing had gotten really shallow and slow... different from how it was the night before...
The alarm in my phone went off at 6.30 and I woke to switch it off but because I was so tired, I went back to lie down again.
But because of the alarm, I was somewhat awake and so a few minutes later when my aunty came out of the room and told D, who was staying over with us, "I think she is gone... I think my mother is gone.." I immediately jumped out of bed and went to see my grandma...
But I noticed that her chest was moving and wondered why my Aunty said she is gone. Apparently my aunty saw her take such a slow, long breath, it seems as if her breath has stopped. But it was the last time I saw her chest move. That slow, long breath, was my grandmother's last....
I was in a daze. I messaged Max and he said he will drop by after he sent Ace to school. I sent a message to the family group chat and so... grandma left us at 6.37am on a Wednesday morning on 22 April 2015.
Ace was lucky in that he met our neighbour who offered to send him to school together with her children. Max told Ace but Ace did not seem to register that grandma has died.. perhaps he is still shocked.
Max and I discussed whether Ace will cry in school as he is usually a little slower to feel his emotions..
I went home and edited another pic that my aunt sent to me. I sent out the two photos I did and asked my cousins to choose the picture they prefer to use at grandma's funeral. Everyone voted for the picture on the right...
It turned out to be such a great choice because this picture was like Mona Lisa's smile... it was grandma in one of her happier moments and she was smiling so happily. Actually, my grandma does not smile often in her life before her dementia... After her dementia, these moments are actually more frequent but as she does not like to take pictures, it is not always possible to take a picture of her smiling. This picture was taken about a year ago and she looked so happy. The picture seemed like Mona Lisa because we realized that no matter where we stood at the wake... when we look at the picture, it will seem as if grandma is actually smiling at us.
Grandma's helper, S, told me that this is grandma's expression when she will say, "If you are naughty, wait I beat you ah..." and then will put her hand on our cheek and sayang us...She used to say that often to us when we were young.. she wil say if we are naughty she will smack our buttocks.. but she never did. Perhaps everything hasnt sunk in yet.
When he returned home, Ace said he did cry in school as he thought about Laoma. However, he called earlier and wondered if he could take a bus to the interchange with his friends. I thought it was strange for him to still be thinking of playing with his friends on this day...
When he came to the place where the wake was held, Ace did not seemed to unhappy too. He stared at me as I cried when grandma's body got sent back to the wake after being embalmed and made up. It was heartbreaking to see her in a coffin and even more so when we were told to call out to her and tell her that she has come back... My mum cried really sadly then because she said only when she saw the body in the coffin did it hit her that Laoma is really gone...
While walking round her coffin to look at her, I cried real badly and the men from the casket company reminded me not to drop any tears onto my grandmother's body. Apparently they will not leave in peace if we do that.
Afterward, Ace was all happy to play with his favorite cousins and they were running about the void deck together...
At 8pm, it was time to do prayers. Since grandma was chanting Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo even when in coma, the whole family agreed that we should hold her wake using SOKA rites. I asked Ace to do chanting beside me and chant for laoma.
Perhaps it is only during this time when he stopped running around that he had time to sit down and really digest the information. While chanting, Ace suddenly started crying... His crying slowly turned into inconsolable sobbing and he cried and cried and cried so hard. I just hugged him and continued chanting. Strangely, at this moment, I felt my grandma's presence behind me. I felt her warm love radiating from behind me, warming up my entire back as if she was trying to console Ace by drowning his sorrows in her massive ocean of love. That is how my grandma is.. though she is a very stern mother to my father and his siblings, she was always nothing but jovial, kind and patient to us, her grandchildren and she loved us so much and always showed her love in everything and everyway she could... After crying hard for 10 minutes or so... Ace stopped and went back to playing.
I asked him afterward what he was crying about and he said that it was when he was seated down that the reality of the fact that Laoma is dead and gone forever hit him and so he could not help but sob and cry his heart out.
The next few days for the funeral was a blur for me. Ace had fun everyday playing with his cousins. Laoma's kana sun (great grandchildren) ran about the void deck and played all sorts of games together. Age was not and issue and the children.. aged 2-15 just ran around playing games together and really bonded.
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| All the cousins playing together at the wake... |
The adults like us.. hung around late at night when we had to shou ye and drank, talked cock, told jokes. We had long, unproductive meetings (cos everyone wanted to express their opinion after a few drinks... my eldest cousin, Kiat , who is head of "committee" / 主席said no more drinking if we have meeting and my sis said then no one will wanna come meetings... wahahaha)
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| Our 主席working hard to hang up the towels sent to us... |
We shared little known family secrets and titbits about the Peng Family history. In those few nights, we played MJ, had karaoke sessions where we played Laoma's favorite songs for her using the sound system... I must say her favourite teochew children's song sounded a little eerie late in the night...
Grandma's favourite teochew song..
My dad was the only son who stayed up late every night. Partially cos the wake was held at the void deck of his house and his other siblings all stayed far away... I think it was also cos he wanted to spend as much time as he could with grandma... I could tell he was really sad and perhaps cannot bear to see his mother go. After all, they had close to 70 years of relationship... In front of others, he put up a brave front and said things like... She is blessed to live till ripe old age of 91 and that it is inevitable.. but whenever he thinks we cannot see or if you connected to his true emotions... my dad is really just an ocean of sadness... My uncles and aunts were all very sad too and everyone showed their sadness in different ways...
In those days, I often went to look at grandma sleeping in her casket. She really looked very peaceful and looked as if she was just sleeping. I often thought I saw her breathing and thought she might wake up.. Even Ace went to see her once and came running to me saying that he saw Laoma breathe... And then it will hit me that she is never going to open her eyes again...
On the very last day, my cousin, Wee, sent his Lion Dance troupe and they did a Flag performance that was done specially for funerals. It was really impressive and I had never seen anything like this.
After that, we did prayers for grandma... we sent her off on her last journey... While the car park we were walking out of is a familiar place, the whole things just felt so strange, so unfamiliar and so surreal...
When we went to the crematorium, we did the prayers and then were sent to a room. We could hear the people in the next room calling out, "Pa! Pa!" as they cried...
And then, it was grandma's turn... Ace somehow managed to squeeze all the way to the front as he squatted down to look at what is happening. Thank goodness, the coffin was sent into the furnace and before anything happened, they closed the doors. Unlike my grandfather's funeral where they only closed the door after we saw the fire burning the coffin, I feel this is probably a more humane way of doing things.
As I was crying when her coffin went into the furnace, I also felt this buzzing in my head and I felt lots of grace and blessings pouring in from the heavens. Though I was still crying as I was sad to see her go, this made me certain that my grandma IS in a better place now and is holding hands with friends from higher places.. That gave me so much peace and made it less painful and so, I don't feel as sad as I did for my grandfather's funeral.
I guess it is also because I was blessed that in her last days, grandma gave me so much time to be with her and be in service for her.. to spend time with her, talk to her, feed her, hold her hand, help clean and turn her around when needed... she gave me time to tell her all that I wanted to tell her.. she gave me the chance to see her breathe her last (as it was my only regret that i did not see my grandfather's last breadth)
I asked Ace now that he has his first experience with death of a loved one.. how does he see death differently as compared to before.
He said, "Last time I thought that if a person dies, they die lor. We just cannot see them forever lor... But now I know that when a person dies, we actually miss them very very much..."
I reminded him that he has to remember also that when a person goes, they will always be alive in our hearts and it will always be possible for us to connect with them in our minds whenever we want to.
PS: A week after grandma's funeral, I was wondering how grandma is doing and then I suddenly realized that she is no longer with us and that I no longer need to wonder about that or worry about her... :(
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