I’d never been very close to my Grandma, and had never communicated with her at a personal level. During my childhood days, my Grandma, who had 8 children, would visit them on a ‘rotational’ basis. I recall she always carried a hard-case luggage containing her ‘wares’ whenever she visited. She would plonk herself onto our living room floor, open her luggage, and take out interesting knick-knacks, like food stuff, fruits, medicine that she bought for us, bank passbooks etc.
The funniest thing I remember about her is that she would show us a handful of bank passbooks and talk to my mom about where she deposited her money: “put $x in POSB Telok Blangah branch, put $y in POSB Toa Payoh branch....”. She was not educated so I don’t blame her. While I understood her intention to avoid concentration risk (whoa, she did know how not to put all her eggs in one basket), she probably failed to realise all these branches belong to the same bank! HAHAH.... Of course if we had the Deposit Insurance Scheme then, all her concerns would be alleviated.
My Grandma was also quite kind. Whenever she saved enough, she would buy little gold jewellery for her grandchildren. I had received from her a gold chain, a low-grade diamond pendant, a ring, a 1g-gold pendant (that was oh-so-fashionable those days), and a pair of little jade dangling earrings. I don’t know where these things are now!
My Grandma passed away on 3 Jan 2010. We “lost touch” during our teenage, and certainly adult years, when my mom went to work and Grandma stopped visiting. To cut the time short, in 2006, Grandma miraculously accepted Christ as her saviour, and she got baptized! Praise the Lord! By then she was 86 years old. Of the few times I attended the Hokkien service at church with her, I was really happy to see her basking in the joy of God, raising her hands up in worship and clapping along happily like a little kid.
Today, I know every well she’s in the arms of Jesus. She had a peaceful wake and funeral, Christian style. I fought back tears during the moment of cremation as I felt I needed to demonstrate to my non-Christian cousins the understanding that when Christians die, we’re just “sleeping” and we’ll all be united in heaven one day. I attended the Hokkien service last Saturday evening, this time without Grandma in the same pew. I just realised that I do miss her somehow. Rest in peace, Grandma!
