Favourite Photos
Icon: LJ/sixthmile
Credits
Layout: tuesdaynight
Inspiration: DayBefore!Misery
Best viewed: Mozilla Firefox.
Resolution: 1280X800.
Mother
Bitched on: Monday, October 30, 2006
Time: 10/30/2006 12:31:00 AM
My sisters, cousins, their kids and I call my paternal grandma 'Mother'. Like in 'mother' mother... I have no idea how that all started and who started it. Weird huh?Time: 10/30/2006 12:31:00 AM
What's weirder is that we call our youngest uncle 'Boy'.
*scratch head*
Good news and bad news.
Good news: my grandma got discharged from the hospital in time for the festivities.
Bad news: she is still bedridden...
Even though I have visited her a couple of times before at the hospital, it was still startling to see her again on Hari Raya (Aidilfitri or Eid ul-Fitr). Her skin is now pulled so tightly across her skeletal frame. And she looks so frail, small and shrunken like a child.
And it was also bitter-sweet cause I think she remembers me now.
Unlike those times when I had visited her at the hospital. Then, I had to remind her over and over again who I was; and everytime when she remembered, her eyes would light up, but just for a while.
On Hari Raya, she didn't need me to remind her who I was this time cause she looked at me with those 'knowing' gaze and that smile... it was so sweet to see her smile.
However, she was quiet most of the time and that could probably explain why she didn't ask me who the hell I was...
Still, that smile was comforting to see...
:)
Yet, she still has her fiery temper; evident when anyone accidentally touch her leg or adjust her blanket (cause she is in so much pain...). Its so scary to see that side of her...
Sigh...
Been having nightmares that something had happened to her.
And I would wake up with a hell of crust in the eyes (eye shit lah... trying not to be crude) from all those sleep-'tearing'.
Crap, I even cry in my sleep!
That's not all, I have also been having nightmares (more like flashbacks) to that day when my maternal grandma died (both my granddads passed away before I was even born).
Its all fragmented but I remember all those pieces of my memories so vividly.
I remember that call my mum got from her youngest brother that their mother was suddenly very ill.
I remember that long taxi ride with my mum, my aunt and cousin to my uncle's place.
And that smell of incense lingering from the house to the lift lobby.
Even at the long corridor from the lift lobby, I remember hearing the Islamic prayers from the house.
I was too young to know but my mum, as well as my aunt, realised.
The realisation sunk in (more like caved in).
I will never forget that moment when my mum laid her eyes on her mother's still body. She was almost hysterical. Blaming herself for not coming sooner.
My grandma... her body, laid there in the centre of the living room, covered partially with a cloth. Already, she was surrounded by 'faceless' men (strangers to me at that time) offering prayers to her departed soul.
Finally, I would remember seeing her face. As if she were sleeping...
And that's when I would wake up from this dream. Fearful that it would happen again...
That it would be too late.
Update:
I went to see one of my grandaunts (Mother's sister-in-law) today, she's close to 90, bedridden, unable to talk or eat solid foods. She is feed with tubes and has to wear a mask connected to an oxygen tank.
She too is small and frail like Mother.
But she has been like this for close to 10 years now.
And it made me wonder, would you want to live to a hundred... like this?
Related Entry:
Life before Death.
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home