Goodbye Grandma
August 06, 2010
Just a couple hours ago, at around 3:00am this morning, my grandmother on my dad’s side passed away. She had been ill for a while now and had been receiving blood transfusions every few weeks for a long time. From I have heard, she got pneumonia a couple of days ago. She went to the hospital and was in a coma. I think she passed away peacefully.
I’m thinking about the HK trip that we took earlier in the year. It was only eight months ago when I was there with my mom, dad, and sis to see her. We were told she was in bad shape then and we wanted to meet her while we could. I am now very glad that we did.
I can’t say that I knew her very well. I’ve only met her a few times in my life and talked to her on the phone when my dad called home. Still, here I am sitting here at 5:24am typing this. My sister says she feels “weird”. “Weird” just doesn’t quite cut it for me right now. I would call it a sense of unknown loss. I know I’ve lost someone close but I’m just not exactly sure what I’ve lost since I didn’t know her so well.
What I do know is that every time I’ve met her, I got the sense that she unconditionally loved me. She was a big complainer (that’s probably where I got it from) but she seemed to be protective of me, as if I needed someone to look out for me. She was always asking me if I wanted anything and offered to buy me anything. That’s the opposite of what I’m about. I enjoy being individualistic and self-sufficient above all else but it was nice to have someone who would spoil me like that given the chance.
I really don’t know much about my grandmother’s past. I know her maiden name was “Wong”. She was a daughter of a fairly successful business dude who dealt in fish or something. I know she wasn’t quite from Canton because she spoke a very different (and hard to understand) dialect.
My mind is going blank now and I’ve gotten out some emotions from this. Goodbye grandma! I’ll catch you on the other side.
