A few days ago, i recall reading up about Urong san's entry featuring the Qin Ming Festival. The famous poem by Du Mu aside, i was struck vividly by the description of his Third Uncle's actions at the grave. I could almost picture an animnated caricature of a middle-aged man caressing a tombstone against the backdrop of a modest sun, a cutting silhouette against a bleak landscape. "How are you?"...
I wonder if this is a most evident demonstration of the ability of Love to trespass across the forbidding barrier separating the Living and the Departed. Appalling as it sounds, my own Qin Ming Festival at my paternal Grandfather's niche at the columbarium was a much sober affair, offering no moments worthy of the big screen. It was very much blase, something i would lament but there's nothing i can do about it.
Today, i read about yet another true story that demonstrates true love yet again. Featured in today's issue of "Mind Your Body", former Scot Nurse Alan Smith shared with everyone how he and his wife, Grace Smith first saw the initial vestiges of Alzheimer's descend on his wife. As the disease tightened its noose on Grace, Alan saw inch by inch, the debilating symptoms manifest themselves on his wife.
He asked her, "Grace... What do you want to do?" She replied simply, "Travel." Even though they jetsetted from one place to another in the last 12 years of her life, Grace would have no memories to keep. All along, Alan tried to let Grace live her life as eventful as possible even as Grace's memory banks were steadily being emptied of their mutual love of 45 years. She passed on in 2001... Though Alan is now alone, he never once stop travelling, an interest tempered many years ago on a nondescript reply from his wife. Now he's published a book, aptly named "Amazing Grace"
Their story was just beautiful. I told myself, i would strive hard to be like Alan...
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