White-haired and happy-bellied

Pre-script: Sometimes I wish I was more enthusiastic about writing than I am about the way my blog looks. I'm so concerned with the way things look sometimes. So shallow #embarrassed. Yes I use hashtags in non-Twitterverse because I like it.

Anyways, I knew that when I came back to writing, this would be the first thing I would want to write about: and that is the subject of my grandmother.

It would have been 3 days to being a month since she has left and sometimes I still don't quite get it. I was having dinner today and it was a good dinner and I immediately thought of 'mama would have liked this place.' before I realized what I was thinking.

I was rather disconnected from reality because she started getting sick again while I was away in Singapore (another reason why I felt Singapore was really really bad timing) and so the image of mama prior to my departure was so different from the reality fo mama after I came back. What used to be a sprightly, upbeat old lady with a pixie haircut was bloated, reddish and tired. She went to the hospital and I got busy doing an internship and I quickly saw her deteriorate into a fragment of what she was; she was upbeat for me, for us but I knew deep inside she too was disappointed at how rapidly the cancer begin to dictate what she could or could not do.

And then one night she was gone. I will forever be grateful that the last thing I said to her was 'I love you and I'll see you tomorrow'. I will forever regret not being able to be there with her when she left us. My sister and I look at what was and still is Mama's house and we both admit to feeling orphaned because we've had our grandparents with us our whole lives and then suddenly losing both of them within 4 short years meant that we had to readjust almost 19 years of mama and yehyeh.

Grandparents are a different dimension of family and it is a terrible poverty to not have known mama and yehyeh. They were the coolest pair of grandparents ever and I will miss this extra layer of covering and protection that they gave me. I have no elegant way of concluding this post except for the fact that I still wish very much that they could have remained wrinkly, old people-smelling, white-haired and happy-bellied forever.

A Reprise

I don't know why I ever gave up writing. I used to think it was an indulgence - or that I had to be one of those celebrity bloggers with lots of pictures and interesting quips to blog or hold an audience.

But I think I've sort of discovered that blogging is expression for me. Or rather, writing is. The desire to put coherence and aesthetic into a flow of thought - that in itself is a thing of beauty and achievement for me. Maybe it's all the Virginia Woolf I've been reading, or maybe it's the fact that my long term partner is far away in some cold country and we don't have as much time for indulging thoughts any more - but I think I'm back to writing. You probably have a very good reason not to trust me when I say that, but I think I write no longer for an audience or anything, though you are of course very welcome to read and comment (:

That being said, I thus conclude today's post in a zillion years (: hopefully, more to come.