myhotCaffeine: Blog

So many thoughts in my head. I’ve been trying to get them out, but it looks like I will have to unload them all here because it’s been echoing off everywhere I turn. I have nobody to speak to.. and I want to get this all out. It’s just been collecting inside me for a really long time. Perhaps almost a decade, or eight years.

I’ve never really felt any bond with festivities around here. While we don’t do Christmas, I guess the Lunar New Year is the yearly celebration by certain races and countries in Asia. In preparation, houses undergo spring cleaning. Red decorations are put up, for red is the auspicious colour. There will be many seasonal foods and other kinds of random goodies in almost any other store you find. Families gather together and have a steamboat/hotpot meal together on the eve of the Lunar New Year, and on the first day of the Lunar New Year we wake up to see a little red packet underneath our pillows with money our parents have given as blessings. Then goes fifteen other days of being polite, greeting elders, and receiving more money in red packets.

Every year I create a space in my head and swim in all the noise and excitement these people share. They are happy, and so I should be, and I always try to be a nice kid instead of my usual grumpy self and I always try so hard not to question it so hard that everything falls apart. Traditions and festivities are great for bringing people together, and sometimes, not all the time, sometimes there’s just a moderate level of pretense in the air. While I like the vibe of the Lunar New Year, I can’t manage to ever overlook how most people end up pretending to be nice to one another. Is that now the new common thing that they share? Either way, it works. They end up having a good time anyway. Every year they will come talk to me and ask me which part of life I’m in now. They’ll ask me how old I am because they’ll never remember, and they’ll tell me that I’m really round and that I should lose weight. Then they proceed to gorge themselves with all the sweets and all the food whereas I will only sit in the corner on my own with a very big book, trying to ignore them all.

Every year, we would usually go back to the countryside for a couple of days. I liked Pengarang. It was a really nice countryside for us to return to every year. I liked everything from the rocky boat ride (where nobody can hear anyone else because the engines roar so loudly) to the sand underneath my shoes the first time I step into the town, the sound of the ocean and all the palm trees, washed fishing nets, brown wrinkly old men on their worn-down scooters and bicycles, the temple, the wooden pillars and planks that barely remain right above the seawater - remains of where my mother used to live as a child, in a fishing house on the sea. My grandfather was a fisherman and he would always bring fresh fish every night for her family. She lived by the sea, and has the highest and most fascinating love for nature. The sun, the sea, the sand, the mountains, the plants and the flowers. She has five other siblings she always took care of too.

When grandpa died, my parents were away in Korea. I received a phone call from my uncle and I called my parents immediately. I was afraid of how my mother would react, but she kept herself strong and said, “Alright. I got it.” the next day they flew back from Korea right away, and we packed our bags to head back. The funeral was painful. I never talked much to my grandparents ever, but I knew that they love me. My dad’s father died when I was one so I’ve never saw him, but I had a bit more interaction with my mom’s father. He was a tolerant old man, and very physically active and muscular. He bought me a lantern for the mid-autumn festival when I was a kid. I picked a green transparent dragon one. It was pretty dang cool.

Anyway, the funeral was a very painful process. It wasn’t just painful because of the obvious fact that grandpa is dead. At a buddhist funeral in the countryside, they set up tents right beside the house and there was a lot of chanting. Sons and daughters and grandsons and daughters had to all change into funeral attire provided, plain-coloured clothing made from cheap fabrics. The sons had to wear a straw hat and straw shoes. I wore a dark blue overall, like a navy blue almost. For two whole days we had to consistently kneel by grandpa’s coffin and listen to all the chanting from the priests. We occasionally took 15 minute breaks, and every time I stood up my knees would really hurt because I was leaning on many little sharp stones. I would run into the house and pick up my book and read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons on the couch to help me escape from the world.

Back to my point. It wasn’t painful because of how uncomfortable it was physically. It’s the slow-paced chanting and the fact that I’ve never seen any of these people so sad. This was my favourite side of my family, and my grandfather was a great man. He was an excellent fisherman. When I was younger, he would take me to the seaside in the evening and I would watch him sort out everyday’s catches from his net with the other fisherman. There would be a lot of mosquitoes, but it was fun to watch - the dynamics of the fishermen, all tired after a day’s work in the hot sun. All of them were extremely tanned. The jellyfish were really fascinating. They were just transparent and they were tossed onto this huge pile. It just really looked like a wobbly squishy pile of clear jelly.

Grandpa’s friends and our extended family were at his funeral too. All I can remember is the smell of incense smoke and the sounds and rhythmic ways buddhist priests chant in, and the stones cutting into my knees. I could see that all of grandpa’s kids (meaning my mom and her siblings) were just holding it all in as reality sank in before them. Grandpa had stomach cancer, and that is also a reason why my mother always got so worried whenever I had dietary problems - I had a weak stomach from a really young age.

The final stage of the funeral was of course the burial. Grandpa was to be buried on a graveyard on a hill not too far from where the house is. The coffin had to be transported on a lorry and we would be on the lorry, around the coffin, and this is when people were encouraged to call, cry, or scream out loud. To let go, and to also “call” the spirit or something like that. I can’t remember the details, I only remembered the crying. I will remember it for life.

My mother is a strong, strong woman. She is also very introverted. Actually, my whole family’s pretty introverted. I’ve only ever seen my mother cry two other times. Once when my dad hit her in rage in the middle of the night 14 years ago - she almost just packed her bags and ran away from home but I stopped pretending to be asleep and I hugged her while she cried as my dad left the house for that night instead, and another time when she was emotionally torn and talking to a friend on the phone - I still don’t know what happened for that one, she wouldn’t tell me and she told me not to tell anyone. Oops.

When it was time to let go, I’ve never heard my mom cry so terribly. She was extremely sad. Her dad taught her how to cook. Her dad taught her how to appreciate nature. She was really close to her dad. More than her mother because her mother was sometimes a very difficult woman who made life very tough for her. My mom’s crying back there was enough to haunt me for the rest of my life. It was really, really bad. Or rather, I was really really sad. I was unable to let go of any emotions because I was only 14, and at age 14 I never cried, ever. I felt so bad. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I only sat awkwardly on top of the van while watching everyone cry. My brother and I just stared at each other after. It was terrible. Basically all my mother’s siblings cried just as hard as her. They really loved their dad. I tried to think of all the times I had with my grandpa, which wasn’t really that many really, but it was enough to make me sad. Several times I was on the verge of crying, but I still ended up being unable to.

After grandpa’s funeral was over after two long days, we packed up and we went back to Singapore. Lunar New Year after that year was extremely gloomy because there was no celebration - you can’t celebrate when there’s just been a death in your family. We just gathered and gave greetings, and all that stuff. When I looked at my mother’s face from then onwards, I could just always see the sadness in her eyes, all the stress and sadness from all the deaths she has seen. Her friend who got murdered, her relatives, and her father. It all never really left me. I never cried, but it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t sad. In fact, all these fresh, vivid memories will follow me for as long as my brain will continue to serve me. It never really goes away, not really, no, and the Lunar New Year can never be the same. Pengarang is going to be taken down. They’re making it into an oil refinery town because of all the natural resources that still remain there. All the citizens have been evacuated, all the buildings and houses will be demolished. All my stories of being by the sea every year and all other related things will soon be ruined, destroyed and torn down, leaving only these memories to speak for them. I’ve been sad. I’ve been very, very sad. Everytime I think of that place, I just die a little more inside, because I’m just very, very sad. And nobody usually knows when I’m sad or what I’m sad over because I can’t never tell them. I try, but I can’t. I also turn into a terrible beast that just hurts people when all I want to do is hurt myself because I don’t ever want to hurt them, ever.

I should go.. And I miss you. I really miss you. I just. I don’t know. I just miss you so much.