this story goes back to saturday. having slept only at 3am on friday night, i was waken up by my father's call on early saturday morning informing me that.. ah gong passed away. its really a shock news to me. woke up immediately and made my way down to ah gong's place.
compared to others, ah gong is a fortunate old man. he passed away in his sleep. and i thought everybody took it quite well especially ah ma. probably ah gong was already in his 90s and we all knew sooner or later this would happen. my impression of ah gong might not be as deep as some of other grandchildren actually. however i can always remember e tone of how ah gong spoke when he's alive at either kampong or blk-19. ah gong was a well-respected man during e era. to what extend? he was once a consultant to a clan for near 50years! his calligraphy was excellent and probably thats something which ive inherited from him - my handwriting is slight above presentable! i will always remember there's this big phone list which ah gong used to hang up beside his telephone, ah gong insisted to write manually all e families' contacts on it and if im not wrong, e papers which he wrote on was cut by him as well. that might be too far away for you guys to imagine, how about this.... just before ah gong's death, he wrote his own obituary notice! ive seen e original copy after his death and all we need to do was to fill in e blanks - e dates and time of his death on e notice. thats how much he loved writing.
past few days at e wake was like a mini gathering at e void deck. only to know e occasion was not a festive one. as i am considered an "internal" grandson (内孙), i am involved in e prayer and chanting every night till e day ah gong was cremated. during the prayer and chanting, e monks encouraged us to follow through and sing along to their prayer and chanting with e "chord" book. e scripts came with hanyu pinying and ive got to recite word by word and at e same time catch up with their pace! i am finding something interesting here... beside every single word, there was some strokes and circles. ive been trying to figure out was that similar to those usual music scorebook where it tells you where to drag e verse, when to stop and drag again and etc. i still couldnt figure that out. e whole night at e prayer and chanting, i would be analyzing how those monks' "scorebook" was understood and how those musical instruments were played! aiya, ah gong understand one lah - i couldnt recite e "scorebook" so i made use of my time kneeing there to focus on things which interested me lor!
next, e food served at e wake was simply unbelievable! i never knew that food served at a funeral wake could be what i would describe as a feast! im so looking forward to e dinner where they would serve fresh steamed fish, fried chickn cutlet, hot soup, vege and etc.... comes supper, there were stir-fried noodles, deep-fried chicken wings, siew mai and etc.... i helped myself to countless packets of drinks as well! now we all know, e chef and cooks at funeral wake really kicked ass at void deck! my only tiny complaint was e portion of e food could be more!!
e mood at e wake was not really very low and dull but when e 3rd day reached, another bad news came, ah gong's younger brother, passed away too. we were stucked in a funeral marathon. all e relatives who were attending ah gong's were not allow to proceed to ah gong's younger brother's one as per instructed by e monks. it was those typical chinese taoist's rules. however it has been made clear, relatives will all flock over to ah gong's younger brother's wake after ah gong's bones have been picked today (thursday). me and joanne have been advised not to attend any more wake.
this year, e tan's great family has lost someone great, someone whom we looked up to. ah gong's spirit stays though. no chinese new year for e tans here this year. regardless what, we will all miss ah gong i believe. i feel for father too. he's trying to be strong but i know he's real saddened by e fact that his father passed away after so many years. hopefully everybody can recover from this loss and move on in life. and also hope that ah gong can bless e whole tans' families under his "umbrella"!
(PS: i should have spacings and paragraphs in between but blogspot screwed up on me here!)
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