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Friday, July 01, 2022 - 21:05 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Of Death And Life

Part of me remains denying it; one week, we were sharing KFC fries as usual, and the next week, she was gone. I must confess that my mental picture of her age had always been stuck about late-sixties, early-seventies (she was 87), and in my defence, it felt like nothing was stopping her from going on for another decade at least - still ambulatory, mostly-alert (if not quite at 100%*), fair amount of vitality. But that's life.

It only really hit me at the wake, with her photo placed before the coffin; that was not her first choice, unless I am mistaken. It is considered only responsible to plan for the inevitable, in our culture, which extends to the last portrait, and her choice had been a black-and-white restoration that might have been mistaken for some Sixties songstress. Heinlein was wise about such. Objectively, I would have to admit that there could be no real cause for complaint, no calls about unfairness. She had lived a full life, raised four children and overseen a bunch of (great-)grandkids, thence achieving everything everything that would have been reasonable to hope for in her situation - and more besides. It was the proper order of things, as the old Zen trope goes. She had long expressed worry about a long, drawn-out decline, in which she would have to be waited on by others. Well, that is no longer a problem.

While we had not conversed particularly deeply for a long time - her having largely fallen back on repeated pragmatic queries about salary, living quarters and such for some years - I still unavoidably miss her concern, from how we had resided together for thirty-odd years. That included a lot of care and tutoring, the latter of which admittedly was largely limited to the dogged copying of Mandarin words, but the basic diligence imparted (alas, somewhat diminished, to my shame) turned out to be sufficient, after all. She, not unlike most Chinese (grand-)parents, would delight in academic accomplishments, which I did try to fulfil mostly. 既然你喜欢，我就尽量吧. I mean, it isn't as if I am not competitive by nature, but there probably wouldn't have been the drive to contest on all fronts (and regurgitate teachings that one personally thinks are kind of bullshit) otherwise. No need for that either now.

There was a five-day wake, the standard and conservative sort (unlike some others), ostensibly expected to be more a celebration than cause for mourning, from how she had (handily) made it past eighty (quite the rarity historically, one supposes). The service was (Pure Land) Buddhist, though with elements of folk religion/Taoism, as common locally. The slight tension between the various traditions, then, would come from the devotion towards direct attainment of nirvana from the Buddhist side, and the slightly more... material concerns addressed by the more-folksy rituals. No harm in covering all the angles, I suppose, and it's not as if the various monks and priests have any objections either, so all's good.

The latter, then, includes the provisioning of a suitable amount of wealth for the afterlife, by means of the burning of paper offerings. Other than the usual mansion (with household help) and automobile (and chauffeur, don't think she had a driving license, and I'm not sure that self-driving A.I. is ready yet; nearly carjacked by a great-grandson however, as seems in vogue nowadays), the universal currency would appear to be the gold/silver ingot**, as folded from joss paper - rolled probably a couple of thousand, one gets the hang of it soon enough. Of course, this manual task is probably partly to keep the bereaved occupied, and not swallowed up by grief, all the more as the customary mahjong may have been banned. Well, I have no concerns about her being able to bribe her way through if that's how it's going to be, she's always been fairly sharp when it comes to the ways of the markets.

There were many old neighbours, friends and acquaintances, most of whom frankly would have little reason for meeting up, other than on such an occasion. Hearing how some of them - delicately put, no spring chickens and often grandparents themselves - recall how she looked after them in their youth, only rubbed her age in all the more. There would be much reminiscing about the old Ama Keng area, where she kept the family farm, with old-timer stories about how they dug into storehouses as kids, gathered on patios to experience the first televisions in the village (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold was mentioned as pretty boring), and togged out in mullets, tight half-buttoned shirts and ginormous bell-bottoms (all possibly back in style), to follow the Beatles and Bee Gees. Well, she had quite a lot of tales too, such as the one where she raided a Japanese camp after their surrender, as a young girl. Only got a hairbrush out of it, though - experience level wasn't high enough for better loot drops.

The wake too would be over soon enough with the funeral goods having gone up in a huge fireball, and it should be noted that the Singaporean race for real estate does not stop at death. Securing a good niche at the columbarium/temple - the final BTO - can be more involved than might be imagined, but my uncles had it covered on that end. Life goes on, then, and I suppose there's really not too much to be regretted. The only loose end on my part from her perspective would have to be getting married... and I guess we'll see about that someday.

[*By observation, a reduction in general engagement and thinking likely contributes to the onset of dementia. The brain is functionally much like a muscle, after all - neglect its exercise (e.g. in believing the mainstream FAKE NEWS unreservedly), and it's all downhill from there.]

[**Normal practice appears to mandate a roughly equal amount of gold and silver ingots, which leads one to wonder about the exchange rate for such in the hereafter. Still, from how bad the inflation may be getting with the Celestial Federal Reserve cranking up*** the quantitative easing for all they're worth, commodities don't seem a bad idea at all. There would also be an organized extended family punt on the 4D lottery, which I imagine she would have approved of, from her own odd flutters in the past. Didn't come through this time.]

[***It can get worse.]



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