My grandfather passed away due to liver cancer in February. The mourning process was not sudden or extreme- having helped to take care of him as the cancer progressed, the process had already started while he was still alive but gradually fading away. I had to watch him go from someone who would take morning walks daily, to someone who needed a wheelchair to go around, then eventually confined to his bed.

Interestingly, he managed to get a little bit of his strength back before he died. He had rallied just long enough to finish the first two days of Chinese New Year.

Chinese funeral proceedings in Singapore are typically drawn-out affairs, over 3 to 5 days. I shed tears twice but never managed to break down mainly due to this fact. Keeping watch over his coffin and going through all the ceremonies wrung out every emotion from me. I was absolutely dull-minded and only briefly cried when following the hearse for his last journey.

During the cremation at Mandai, I felt distanced both physically and emotionally. From a floor above, we watched as the coffin was wheeled from below us into the furnace, yet we never saw a lick of flame.

Following the cremation, we received his ashes. In this context, ashes consisted of bone dust and many pieces of bone both large and small. At the columbarium, we had to place his bones into the urn one by one, after which a representative would use a pestle to grind some of it up to fit the urn.

Months after his passing, my room was revamped, eliminating the last reminder of a time before my grandpa passed away (as part of the funeral, we had to collect his belongings and clothes and get rid of them). Sometimes, I look around the room and try to reminisce him. Temporally, it feels so far off, way farther than 10 1/2 months ago.

Ah Gong, I wish you could have seen me mature while you were still here. From the afterlife, I hope you’re still looking out for my growth and development.