The Year my Grandmother Died

Mother, wife, wife, mother.

Your father loved his journal, his little book of memories.

He would constantly flip through the pages. His favorite parts were the parts at the end: the pictures of his wife, your mother, and his mother, your grandmother. Black and gray and white, grainy pictures that would mean nothing to anyone but the Old Man.

The rain fell, one crystal after another, as you walked slowly. The ground is wet. Your father is beside you, a man of age, a man with a prune-like face, shrivelled with a thousand wrinkles.

“You know what I told her…right before the war.”

“Mhmm.”

“Never blindly believe. In anything.”

“Mhmm.”

“But yet she still did. Now…look what happened with your grandmother.” “...”

Thoughts flash through your mind.

Nanjing, Hospital, Bomb, Savior Complex, Nanjing, Hospital, Bomb, Bomb, War…

You all continued to walk, clip clop, clip clop. One step after another, that’s all you needed. The rhythm of the steps, the conformity of the steps with the pitter pattering of rain. The umbrella does not work, it’s filled with holes: holes of longingness and sadness and deep dormant fear and a deep dormant love, conflicted. Father, he was a stern man. A man with a cane, a cane which is and will forever be imprinted in your memories. The smacking of the cane on your hardened dark hands; numb to pain and all feeling.

Your mother would try to calm him down, after all, you had only put your elbows on the table. It was not polite, but that did not deserve a beating.

One lap around the neighborhood turns to two, and then three. You hear the sound of a girl playing the violin in the distance. In one of the apartment rooms. 5th floor? Or maybe 4th? 4 is an unlucky number, the number of Death. The unpleasant screech of string on hair. Screech, screech, scccreeeeechhhh. Is this supposed to be Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or Vavaldi’s Winter or just a mangled mishmash of notes jammed and crinkled and smushed together? Ugh, there is no way—this—this is not music.

Your father is old. You knew as much. He was stern, and strict, and harsh, but you love him, and he loves you, in his own way. The doctor told you to “take the old man on walks”. You obliged. Your dull and somewhat simple minded daughter had come back from the Land of the Free. For a visit, a quick visit for a few weeks. She’ll be gone again soon. Your daughter was simpleminded, and rarely spoke. A dense girl who was not tall nor short, a dense girl who was thin, almost emaciated. A dense girl who had no particular talent. But somehow, you loved her.

It was on the fourth lap that you heard it.

Another sound, a sound of screams, the flashing of lights. Rubies under the sun.

An ambulance has come, blaring its ugly red lights, four lights—two at the front of the truck and two at the back—a sign of death. A sign of urgency. Father opened his eyes a tad, through his folds of wrinkly skin.

Everything happened in a blur. One minute you and Father were talking to the men, the next second Father was kneeling down on his knees, a stern man who had never cried once, would shed a tear. A crystalline droplet.

Time of death, Y—, —- pm, July —.

My grandmother, your mother, had a heart attack. Fainted, fell on the hard concrete floor.

First his mother, then his wife. Poor grandfather. Mother died in an external war, wife died in an internal one.

“Her body will be cremated next week. Say anything you want to her now. While you still can.”

The funeral decorators looked sympathetically at you. A rush of wind through the windows, fluttering the curtains.

You say nothing. In fact, you simply stand there—motionless. Alone. Yet, everyone knew you loved her.

…

I wasn’t at the funeral. I wasn’t at either of my grandmothers’ funerals. Well, I was, but I wasn’t fully there. The famous philosopher and psychiatrist Carl Jung once recounted walking out of the mist in the eleventh year of his education, so I must, dear reader, contrast Jung’s experience to my own. I am in my eleventh year of schooling, yet I have not walked out of the mist. I did not walk out of the mist during the day of my grandmother’s funeral, and I have yet to walk out of the mist now.

I was miles away in another land; a land of hope and love and faith, a land of dreams and naivete. A land of the ignorant selfish child. A land of mist and fog and bog and more mist.

A few weeks after the funeral, I was walking with my grandfather, the stern prune-like man. We didn’t say a word to each other, until four laps later, he spoke:

“Maybe you should go back home. The clouds look gray, it might rain.”

I shook my head and kept walking with him.

“Tell me Lulu, why does anyone believe in anything? Why can’t these people see sense? How do you love others so much that you would die for them? How? Tell me. You know about the Western God don’t you? What would He tell you to do?”

“I don’t know, but perhaps that is the answer to it all. There is no reason to love, love is simply there. Love, faith and hope.”

“That does not answer my question.”

“You’ve asked the wrong person, you know I am quite a dull grandfather. I have never been smart.”

“My mother, she believed in such things. During the bombing of Nanjing, she tried to help…she was mistaken for the enemy, and she passed away. It was her love that killed her, Lulu. She was a Christian. A believer in the Western God. Why act so irrationally? Why love something that did nothing but give her pain?”

The Great Prune-like Man swivelled his head towards the sky with such force that I thought he would break his own neck.

“I mean, why does anyone love anything? Is there a reason for love? Why do you love me and my father? Why did you love grandmother and great grandmother? Is there a reason at all grandfather, do you need a reason at all?”

Grandfather winced as if he had eaten something sour, his mouth minced together as if he had just sucked on a lemon.

“Go home. Lulu, go home.”

I said no more and left. I was dumb and dull, but I knew he was angry, even I could tell that he had anger.

I left him all alone in the rain. His cane clicking on the bricked up path.

I didn’t see my grandfather again for hours, until he eventually returned home. Drenched from head to toe.

He refused to speak to anyone all afternoon, but at night–oh, at night!

All night, I could hear him! He stayed up flipping through his little journal, his book of memories. Wife, mother, mother, wife.