‘Til Death Do We All Part

I was a year old when my mother gave birth to my little brother Aldrich. Two weeks later, he passed away.
I can just imagine going back through time and looking at myself, that one-year-old cradled in her father’s arms. Everyone might just be whispering: Poor kid, she just lost a brother. Poor kid, her mother just lost a son. Or even worse: what if someone called me lucky? Lucky that I didn’t feel my mother’s sorrow, lucky I didn’t have to hurt, and all because I didn’t understand the definition of loss, or the reality of losing someone. What was loss to a child who only understood happiness as being able to drink enough milk and get enough sleep everyday?
Does this mean that age has something to do with how one sees death?
I would probably agree with that line of thinking had my Sa-Ku not passed away. My mother’s youngest brother lived in Felda, Bukit Batu[1] and thanks to Tuberculosis, was forced (by the powers that be) to leave this world---which also meant leaving his three kids, his wife, and his parents behind. I saw how my Gua-Ma, his and my mother’s mom, grieved for him once before the last time I saw my Gua-Ma... and it wasn’t an encouraging sight. She missed him terribly, the only son who chose to continue living with her and Gua-Kong, his and my mother’s father.
For four summers now I have been returning to Malaysia to visit my relatives. The first two summers were the only times I actually met my Uncle because we’d stay at my grandparents’ house for at least a week. My Uncle continued living with my grandparents because he felt it his responsibility to take care of the duo after all of his elder siblings had finally said their I Do’s at the altar. When it was his turn to marry, he told his wife-to-be about his dilemma. She consented to continue living with my grandparents and to take care of them while raising their own children.
I absolutely admire my Uncle for his decisions and would have liked to tell him about it, but the act itself would have just ended in vain. To the members of his own family he was a very approachable man; but I couldn’t help but see him differently. There was not enough reason to make me feel at ease with him. The language barrier that stood in between us didn’t help, either. Whenever he flung a Chinese question at me, I would boomerang an English answer back at him. My mother would just quietly observe us and see who would give up first. In the end, it would be a draw: we gave up pretending to understand each other and resorted to just talking to my mother, who understood both languages. Thus my encounters with him were reduced to mere Hi’s and Hello’s (in English, of course), even though I stayed in his house longer than normal visitors usually did.
I discovered his passing away one night after catching my Mom wiping fresh tears off her face. I asked what was wrong, and instead of getting an answer I was reprimanded. Before long I was shooed out of the room. The next day she admitted what had happened: my Sa-Ku, her youngest brother, had just passed away.
Indirectly encountering death for the second time still didn’t move me to tears. I was a teenager by then, but by that time I had a whole new set of ideas floating in my head---Ideas like how I was never going to be able to try to say another incoherent Chinese sentence to my Uncle ever again, or questions on how his children would survive without the support he would still be giving them if he were just alive. I was a young girl brimming with wonder and curiosity about the world, particularly death. Now that I think about it, it is quite unfair… that what I merely see as something I ponder about, other people do experience. I kept my mouth shut about the topic after that.
It is particularly easy to fall into the trap of thinking of such things when you’re warring with boredom. Sometimes, for example, I think about my little brother and wonder if he could have been my personal coach at basketball were he still alive today. When it comes to my Uncle I tend to wonder if I could have been a better niece by actually learning how to speak a language I ought to already know by heart. I’d reflect and would again and again fall back on one conclusion: that life isn’t long enough for anyone. Fate doesn’t wait for you; it ends the moment fate finally aims and swings its scythe at your neck.
Live life to the fullest---someone once told me. I’ve never been good with following advices, but that was one advice I have been trying to follow as much as I can. So for the past few years, instead of getting down on my knees to beg the saints to lengthen my life, I have actually lived it. Why grieve when you’re having so much fun?

***
061306
Almost 2 a.m.
A-Tsin called up just a few minutes ago to tell my mom that Gua-ma had just passed away.

It was the eve of June 12 when my Mom all of a sudden said that Gua-Ma had just gotten out of the hospital. The two of us were in the study room then, she playing a game called Bookworm on her computer while I was typing out a History paper on mine, when her statement suddenly sliced through me the way the blade of an axe could have probably sliced through a log. The hairs on my skin stood on ends, and my heart stopped beating for a few seconds. The background music of my mom’s Bookworm game suddenly blended in with the silence that came right after her statement, the music turning into silence and the silence turning into a sound that felt both empty and yet bloodcurdling.
I hadn’t even known that Gua-Ma was in the hospital before then.
It was during those few seconds of silence that I quickly remembered the last time I saw Gua-Ma. It had been less than a month before, and I can still remember her smiling as if there wasn’t anything in the world that could bother her. “Come back next year?” She had asked in Chinese. I sadly said that I might, but only if I had found a job by then.
But she’s fine now, my mother said a few minutes later. After a while she added, A-Tsin’s taking care of her right now.
I turned my gaze from my task-at-hand that was displayed on the screen to the side of my mother’s head. Her face looked solemn; she seemed focused on her game where one or two blazing books were slowly burning their way down through the piles of paperbacks. She loved the game so much that there were times that I couldn’t tell if she was playing her game out of the sheer fun of it or to shoo off thinking of thoughts such as the one that she had just presented me with. I continued to watch her for a few more seconds, as if waiting for some change to take place in her. Nothing happened, though, and I was left more perplexed than ever. There was nothing for me to do but to return to my work. I couldn’t figure out the expression on her face. She was so hard to decipher.
But there was a fist still clutching at my heart, squeezing it as if testing the veracity as to whether or not it would really explode if held tight enough. I wanted to take out the most personal item I had, my journal, and start writing. But the act of leaving my seat to get my favorite object out of its hiding place and to furiously scribble my thoughts and ideas in it would surely make my mother suspicious and distrustful. It was like taking notes, except with a passion, something my mother would not appreciate. Such an act, or at least that’s how I feel, makes one feel as if the person was backstabbing you and judging you and putting it all down on paper. So I decided that Microsoft Word could substitute first.
While my Mom was telling me that Gua-Ma was finally recovering from her sickness in the comforts of an air-conditioned ward in the hospital, my cousin A-Tsin was at work trying to reach us over the phone, begging God to finally reach us over our phone line here in the Philippines.
I was on the computer, furiously typing ideas away when the phone rang. It was around 1 AM, and a ring broke through the silence of the sleeping rooms and my own tranquility, making me jump in my seat. After a few more disturbing rings and frustrated head scratchings, I finally stood up and walked over to the telephone about twenty steps away from my seat. “Hello?” I greeted, although it might have sounded more like a demand then.
“Hello… Is A-Pun home?”
“A-Pun?” Oh, my Mom. Wait. This voice wasn’t familiar, plus it sounded British-like. “Who’s this?”
“It’s A-Tsin from Malaysia. Will you accept this call, Ma’am?” Oh, a telephone operator.
Oh my God.
A serrated knife was being twisted in my heart. The few seconds of silence that lasted between us felt like a few hours, my heartbeat pounding ten times louder in my head. What the hell was happening? A phone call from Malaysia? “Yes, I will.”
I wanted to gasp for dear life when A-Tsin’s voice finally replaced the phone operator’s. For the first few dragging seconds I felt the need to strangle the information out of my elder female cousin. Tell me! I remember screaming inside. Tell me!
“How’s Gua-Ma?” I said after a few seconds. The hairs on my skin were all frozen stiff, voices stifled from screaming. “Is she okay?”
A few seconds later came A-Tsin’s reply. “She is gone…” She whispered, her voice brave yet shaky. “She is gone just now… I was trying to call you for so long, since 8 PM…”
Have you ever felt the need to cry and scream and kick and punch and beg and fall and do every action that one could relate to escape but of course, could never do in a split second? I was feeling that need at that moment, but could do nothing. A few seconds later I remembered that this was a long distance call. I called for my mother. “Ma!”
My mother was in a condition worse than mine when she got off the phone. She was shaking, false strength showing through her. I had by then taken out my journal and scribbled anything and everything that was running through my head---my regrets, my stress, my sorry’s. She had no journal; she was a fortress who believed that secrets ought to be kept in the head, not in a place where it could be used against you one day. And thus, keeping her secrets within her, she could seek no other refuge but herself at that moment.
For the next few minutes my Mom and I kept silent, struggling against ourselves and against the reality of this event had become such an extreme weight on both our shoulders. We were both seated on the chairs that surrounded our Narra dining table. A few minutes later she looked at me and said, “Go online.”
She wanted me to go to an airline website.
Later that night when my mother had finally decided to return to her room, I stared at the computer screen.
Four out of the four times I visited my relatives in Malaysia, Gua-Ma always received me with open arms. “Come back next year?” She asked.
Come back next year? She asked.
And I gave her a condition: only if I had finally gotten a job by then.
I continued to stare. And without realizing it, tears had begun streaming down the sides of my face.

[1] Felda is a small area in Bukit Batu, a town in the city of Johor in West Malaysia.