Inaugural Piece of Memory

Rather than agonising over what to post these days, i think, i can start posting something of a regular fixture. This one will be on random (forgive the irony here...)bits of memories.

Memories of things i once did. Events that once took place in my life. Basically they comprises of things that registered nothing but eternal regret in my heart. I find it soothing and even therapeutic to post them here now because many of these things or events remain till now, a hidden part of me. Something that was too painful to mention...till now.

Memory #1 My Grandfather

As a child, i used to hear my parents discussing my father's family. As far as i'm concerned, my opinion is that my father's family is dysfunctional. For one, my grandfather and grandmother live apart and do not talk to each other. For how long, i'm not sure.

They always speak in hushed tones and converse mainly in dialect so as to prevent us, the children from eavesdropping. But my father's angry expression always gave it away. There could be no doubt as to what he felt for his father.

A hawker who eventually prospered hawking Char Kway Teow, my grandfather could be described as someone who earned quite a fortune in those days... How about $3000++/month in the early 1970s? Sigh... People in those days, i always suppose that they uphold traditional values and place great emphasis on the family as a basic unit of society. At least, that is the impression i get from other elderly and the media in general. Not him though...A maverick, that i don't want to know.

He squandered it all away... All his life, he could have amass a sizeable fortune and buy a handsome bungalow in Seletar Hills. No... he didn't favour this conventional thinking. Spending it all on gambling, beer and friends was the wiser option, it seems... As to why he thought it as such, i'm none the wiser.

My father had to work from Pri 3 onwards. Stir frying Char Kwat Teow in a stuffy and hot environment and deprived of a memorable childhood, i don't know how my father managed to rough it all out. Homework could only be done earliest, 3am out in the corridor courtesy of erratic street lighting.

Imagine seeing your father treating his friends to a monstrous pile of tantalising chicken wings while all you got to eat was the sharp point segment of the 3-part chicken wing. The other stallholders laughed at my father... *Why are you ordering bee hoon soup? Your father is enjoying himself! how pathetic! i can imagine the incessant cackling that echoes on and on in his mind... Some images can't be erased just by the passage of time, can it?

Meanwhile at home, my grandmother was shrieking at my dad all day long... Venting her frustration from her failed marital union, she came to value money as an unfailing life partner... The final straw came when my dad wanted to further his studies after o levels. No... they saw no point. What benefits are in store for them? Nothing or so as they thought... He left home...

Fast forward to 30 years later. I was notified by my dad that my grandfather has lapsed into a coma owing to complications arising from his diabetic condition. I was far from being shocked, in fact i was calm and expressionless. I saw him in th Intensive Care Unit, a frail shadow of his former self. I had once witnessed him chomping gaily onto a chicken drumstick with dexterity and strength of a 40 year old man when he was 70 years old. With an assortment of tubes and a complex array of equipment surrounding him, i was momentarily befuddled and speechless. The silence was deafening...

But that was all i felt then. 3 months later on one grey windy morning, i was awoken to my father announcement that my grandfather had already passed on in the previous night. Yet again, i felt nothing stir in my heart. Not even in the most murky depths of it. I began to suspect whether i am a warm-blooded mammal or not.

The funeral was a whirlwind of an affair. I braced myself, hoping to catch a glimpse of his so-called friends. There, i was prepared to imprint onto myself forcibly, an indelible image of each and everyone of them. I wanted to remember each and everyone of these people who had a part in my father's misery...with a vengeance. None came. I was somewhat relieved that my long-held opinion of them was vindicated.

Meanwhile in the usual buzz of activities held during the funeral, i saw my dad's siblings shed tears. I paused to wonder for a moment... How on earth did Man acquire the deadly ability to put on an act whenever he has the need to, in the course of evolution? These very same people who have unabashedly hounded my father for nothing but personal gains and viewed everything else in monetary statistics in the past, have the gall to shed tears of passion for all to see? I contemplated morphing into a scud so as to launch myself at these rats... Ruddy idiots! However, in the end i still hadn't made history by becoming the first real animorph.

Finally, it was time for the cortege to move out to Mount Vernon, where the final journey will end. We were temporarily housed in a waiting room of some sorts. It resembled a crude chapel with long pews crowding the sides of a middle aisle coupled with a high ceiling. The ceiling was dank and at the corner, there was a small skylight, letting in a dull beam of yellow which merely accentuated the rising spires of incense smoke. Then suddenly, the person that i thought would not break down, gave away. My father. I was outraged by it all. Even scandalised. My grandfather do not deserve my father's tears. It was most bitter of a howling. I was petrified for that brief moment.

Amidst this harrowing episode, we were motioned to proceed on into a viewing gallery. I noticed then that the casket was being awkwardly cranked haltingly into a conveyor belt. The viewing gallery was like a typical section in a hospital with handgrips and all, albeit it was a dead end. It was fitted with plexiglass from my waist onwards so i can picture vividly, what was going on out there.. "There" was a large spawling room, barren except for some forlorn looking trolleys positioned in a haphazard fashion . On one of the walls of that room, there was 2 ugly ovens jutting out like some grim portraits, sized to fit a casket. Then before i can even i register anything, two staff members popped out from nowhere and shoved my grandfather, casket and all into the oven like he was vermin.
*Slam
To my other fellow occupants of the gallery then, the experience was dissimilar, the process was agonising slow and the slam of the casket into the oven was met with an outburst of wailing and shrieking.

Now i was really stunned and baffled. It took me some time to really assimilate the implication of that action that i had just witnessed.

My grandfather, gone...
forever...
i can never greet him or talk to him again...
Never...
no chance at all...
Nothing, all gone now...
never again...