Book of the Week: Just finished The Poet by Michael Connelly. Very enjoyable.
I’m sitting here in my flumpy clothes, relaxing at home after a day that just flew by at work (six stories on West Fife recipients of New Year’s honours – barely saw the hours go by). I’ve just had a couple of lovely, warming Mathieson’s pies and a pack of chicken-and-herb Super Noodles, which had a similar effect. Gareth and I are keeping an eye on World’s Strongest Man, enjoying each other’s company but simultaneously doing other things – I’m writing this and he’s trying to finish his Wasgij puzzle.
We’re basically unwinding, but I’m aware – in the sense that you’re aware of something important that needs to be done, like packing your clothes for a last-minute trip tomorrow – that it’s New Year’s Eve (sorry, Hogmanay, as this is Scotland). Another three hours and we’re into 2008. I’ll be 36 – third cycle of the Chinese zodiac – and it’s scary how the last six years have just zipped by. It feels like not too long ago that I was 30, only halfway to the third cycle, and next year (two and a half hours now) I’ll be there. It’s true – once you hit 30, your life just slips past without you noticing it. I mean, half my life ago I was in Lower Six.
But I think I’ll leave that for my actual 36th birthday. No point getting ahead of myself and having another mid-life crisis before it’s due (it’ll only be my… umm… sixth, I think). Right now, on the threshold of a new year, I think I should be in a more contemplative mood and reflect on the year past. It’s one that’s gone by in the blink of an eye – quite possibly the fastest in my mind. And here are my memories.
January
Uncle Leong’s death and funeral dealt the family an emotional blow.
Adopted Coconut.
One of the most depressing Chinese New Years of my life – the loss of an uncle compounded by being told some very devastatingly hurtful things by someone I love very much. It made me think that moving to Scotland was a good move after all.
On the bright side, found out that the first Lee baby would be born in June.
February
After months of hassle, finally got my Fresh Talent visa – on way to becoming bona fide UK resident!
March
Gareth stopped over in Malaysia on his round-the-world trip. Had a good two weeks meeting the dogs, my relatives and seeing Kuantan.
Went to Cambodia and had that familiar “a little more of life lived” feeling. Hadn’t had that for a long time. Angkor Wat blew our minds. It was very hot and dusty, but the Coconut Dream smoothies we had at our guesthouse more than slaked our thirsts.
April
Found home for Coconut. Had fears and reservations about Minni and family initially, but I now know that it was the right choice. They’ve really spoiled him. He even has a new friend, Rocky!
Went to New Zealand. I think I left it 10 years too late to truly have that “a little more of life lived” feeling – in 1997, it would have gone into overdrive. Too many pseudo-uber-cool culture-travel wannabes (you know, the “I’m a traveller, everyone else is a tourist” types) killed it for me I think. Must go back, this time without the dizzying whizzing around.
Tidied up all my belongings in one week. My whole life, over the last 15 years, reduced to 18 boxes. Made me wonder if I had actually accumulated anything of real value.
Arrived Scotland to officially begin new life.
May
Started new job. Two weeks later, had my first experience of the self-important, pompous windbags scattered throughout West Fife.
Madeleine McCann went missing. SNP voted into power in Scotland.
Had our first archery lesson together at Cluny Clays.
Turned 35. Officially middle-aged now. Worked on my birthday for the first time in seven years. Went to Room With A View at the Forthview Hotel and tried the mind-blowing monkfish wrapped in Parma ham.
June
Went to Kelvingrove on a cold, rainy afternoon. Fabulous. Learnt so much!
Stayed in a castle! Dream come true! Didn’t feel too castle-y – more Scottish country house with lofty ambitions – but fact remains: have stayed in a castle. Enduring memory is of Gareth not telling me how spooked he was after watching Dr Who, to the point of seeing nasty thingies in the window panes. But then again, he was the one who’d read that the castle was haunted, not me.
Stopped at Pitlochry and met Jane’s daughter Amy Bo for the first time.
Procession of Inverkeithing Highland Games went past our Parisian balcony. Scooby-Doo and the Incredible Hulk stuck out amidst the tartan.
Went for our first drive together up the East Neuk and had the best fish supper in Scotland in Anstruther. Loved Crail especially and really hope we can have a getaway – or picnic – there soon.
Bruce Festival in Pittencrieff Park. Loved the jousting!
Attended the Riding as part of the opening of the third session of Parliament. Came back and saw myself on STV news. Also got the news about Glasgow Airport and Toby being born.
July
Graduated. Can now officially add the extra five letters after my name.
Stirling – my first real Highland Games!
Hosted our first Couchsurfing guest. A smoker, no less! I must be more liberal and tolerant than I give myself credit for, I think.
August
Went down to Nailsworth to visit Dina, Tim and newborn Toby. Wonder if it was even worth it…? Cirencester was great though.
Stayed the weekend at Lorna’s at St Fillans. Absolutely spiffing Enid Blyton type house with fantastic Highland village atmosphere. Had great fun at the fete. Went walking.
Chris visited. Did Loch Leven and East Neuk. His driving sets my teeth on edge! Must learn to drive before his next visit.
Went to East End Park to see my first football match in the UK. Ever. And it was a UEFA match too – Dunfermline Athletic v BK Hacken. Crap teams, yes, but still... a UEFA match...
September
Went to Stockholm and Gothenburg. Object lesson in how Ikea is not Sweden, and vice-versa. Some places looked more Glaswegian than Swedish. Rough shite Glaswegian, that is, not Kelvingrove.
The upside to the trip was that we had our first experience as Couchsurfing guests, and it was just fantastic.
Started thinking seriously about making a round-the-world trip together without flying. That would be a trip!
October
Went to Pitlochry for the Autumn Festival. One of the most romantic weekends we’d been on. The perfect getaway. Lovely autumnal weather, amusing and engaging entertainment (the sound and light show at Faskally Wood, the ghost tour) and warm, snuggly accommodation.
Also went to see Jane again on the way down. Amy can now walk!
November
Had my best lazy weekend of the year. Morning cuddles, an amazing fried breakfast, a movie, then nothing but books – travel, at Borders.
After 10 years, I finally saw the funeral of Diana in full. I always knew I was a decade behind.
Gua Ma died peacefully in her sleep. Rest in peace. We shall all miss you.
December
Christmas. We did our first “12 Days of Christmas” together – I’d done it for Mum and Dad in the past – and it was really something special. We look forward to coming home every day, but those two weeks really gave us something to look forward to. Sometimes, just to think of it at work was enough to keep me going. I got 12 lovely gifts, none of which was a book neither.
Played Mr & Mrs and discovered that we actually know each other better than we give ourselves credit for. Was a surprise how much we think alike and understand each other.
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Still remember 1988, when she was elected leader. How my political views have changed since then.
Worked my first Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve for the first time in seven years. Times like these, I really miss working in Malaysia, with all its public holidays and laid-back time off.
And now I’m celebrating my first Hogmanay as a working girl in Scotland. Not worked for the last two years!
Looking back on our big to-do list, I don’t think we managed to complete a whole lot. I didn’t read enough, for starters. I didn’t travel enough. But putting down what it is I want to do has certainly directed how I spend my time, and has made me do more of what makes me happy. And thanks to that list, I have a lot to look back on this year. I’m sure I’ve missed out a few memories, but those are the ones that stick out in my mind and which will bring many smiles to my heart in the years to come.
Here’s to making many, many more memories in 2008. Happy new year. May we continue to be blessed with love, health, happiness and each other.
Factoids of the Week:
The word Blighty comes from “biyalti”, the Urdu for homeland. From Urdu also came “kushi”, which in time became cushy – comfortable or pleasant.
The trench coat – today a fashion staple – was devised by clothing manufacturers to keep officers warm and dry, and the belt rings were a feature originally used to carry hand grenades.
There are 17 surviving versions of the Magna Carta – which is really several documents rather than just the one definitive charter. And the plural of Magna Carta is Magnae Cartae.
The whale is descended from a raccoon-like creature called the Indonyus.
The Australian town of Eucla has its own time zone – 45 minutes ahead of Western Australia and 45 minutes behind South Australia. Isn’t the maths involved fabulous?!
The Tabula Peutingeriana, a parchment scroll dating from the 12th or 13th century, is the only surviving copy of a road map from the late Roman Empire. It’s housed in the Austrian National Library. I wanna see that. Something to add to the Big To-Do List, methinks...
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Goodbye, Gua Ma
It’s taken me a while to get around to this, but I didn’t really know where to start. But I knew I had to, because it’s something I want to remember – I don’t want to look back on it through a clouded glass in maybe 10 or 15 years to come. It’s a significant coincidence for me, though, that I’m finally getting round to it exactly seven weeks since it’s happened – New Year’s Eve will mark the end of the 49-day mourning period for Gua Ma.
It was about 7.30pm on November 11 that Dad called. We’d just had dinner and I was settling down for the evening, and I started off the conversation by joking if this was one of his “toilet break” calls, since it was about 3.30am back home. When he said he had some bad news, I thought perhaps a family friend had died – and my heart gave a little start just in case it was Dusty or Lucky.
But no. It was Gua Ma. I certainly didn’t expect it. I had always thought of her as a woman death would have to fight hard to take. She was always so strong, so formidable, so indomitable in both body and spirit. So to hear that she had died came as such a shock, I didn’t know how to react. And then it hit home and the dam burst.
I wept for many things.
For her, because she had lived the last two years of her life in a care home, away from the one that was familiar to her. Her mind was going – the early stages of Alzheimer’s or dementia – and couldn’t take care of herself. But she didn’t understand why she was in care and was always asking to go home. I cried because I wondered if in her reduced state, she had died feeling unloved and uncared for. She had had such a hard life, and it just felt so sad and tragic that in her last days, she had to relive it all over again – as she regressed, she would constantly worry about money.
For Mum, because I knew she would take it hard – she had taken on herself so much of the responsibility of caring for Gua Ma over the last 10 years. Because I knew how difficult it had been for her to make the decision to put her own mother into care. It was like our very own personal version of King Lear. Gua Ma never understood – she always saw it as a betrayal of filial piety, when it was exactly the opposite. Despite all the awful things Gua Ma said to her, Mum never stopped caring for her. It must be double heartbreak to know your parent is deteriorating and is not fully aware of what she is saying, and have to suffer the pain of those very cutting words.
For me, because I had just lost my grandmother, my last link with my past. I’ve only known two grandparents my whole life, and it is so strange, even now, to think that this was someone who had seen me grow up. I certainly didn’t know how long my grandmothers would live, but feel very blessed that there was one for me throughout my adult life. I felt like I had lost a piece of my history. I also wept because it was the second death in the family within a year, and I felt I was losing my loved ones faster than I was ever prepared to let them go.
I was not as close to Gua Ma as I was with Ah Mah, and it was for that that I grieved above all. As a child, I was always reluctant to go visit her, because I thought her bossy, loud and domineering. But as I began to see her with adult eyes, I found her wise, with a sly – and often crude, in the way that only Hakka women can be – sense of humour. She looked out for her family first and foremost, and when I thought of what she went through to bring them up – walking all the way from Kuala Lumpur, losing two husbands, giving up two children and losing another two – I couldn’t help but feel pride and amazement. For 10 years, I’d thought of dragging Josh back home with me on weekends, so we could both talk to Gua Ma and find out more about her, about how she came to Kuantan, about what life was like for the family. It never happened, and it’s never going to happen now. She had a remarkable life, and I just feel so sad that she never really told us about it and that she wasn’t really given the chance to do so. I just hope she knew she was loved.
I used to get really annoyed with Gua Ma at times, but I’m glad she lived as long as she did so I could get to know what she was really like. Even as we celebrated Christmas this year, I thought back to the last one – how fast a year goes by – when she was at our house and clearly enjoying being out of the care home. She was never afraid of speaking her mind, whether asked for her opinion or not – and last year she berated a few of our neighbours for just coming over for the Christmas food and not even bothering to speak to their hosts. She was inadvertently funny and if she found something funny, she’d let out a very hearty, loud guffaw. She had the crudest, most amazing vocabulary when it came to swearing or telling someone else, an attribute that never ceased to amuse and appal us in equal measure. She was incredibly independent – many people in town have an enduring memory of her cycling around well into her 70s (no mean feat given the roads in Malaysia), and after she had her kneecap replaced, she would take the bus in to visit friends. She wasn’t one for sitting around in one place.
I have too many memories of Gua Ma to list, and I think it says a lot that most of them make me laugh. I last saw her alive on April 28, a few days before I left to come here. When I saw her again last month, in the coffin, it just felt surreal. She didn’t look anything like I remembered her. To be sure, in the one year I had been here, she had lost a lot of weight and had had her hair cut short, but she still looked so different. Knowing what we did of her, I almost expected her to sit up and grumble, in the same manner she usually did over restaurant-cooked food, “You paid how much for this coffin? It’s too small! I could make a better one!”
I had done all my weeping on Gareth’s shoulders and on the flight back, and when I looked at Gua Ma, I just felt overwhelming sadness and loss, because of what she would never be able to tell us now, and of what I would never know or tell her. It was a feeling compounded at the funeral. When Ah Mah died in 1993, it was difficult seeing the coffin being put into the grave. But it was even more difficult seeing Gua Ma’s coffin being wheeled into the incinerator at the crematorium. It was a horrible place to be, so bereft of emotion, built to drive home the pain and anguish of your bereavement, it just felt so wrong that a woman who had been so full of life would have her final goodbye there.
As we drove away, the wisps of black smoke floating out the chimney, I thought, that’s my Gua Ma, and said a quiet goodbye. I did the same when we took a boat ride out into the sea to release her ashes the next day. I now understand the poignancy of the act – I found it hard to believe that all that remained of Gua Ma, who was so much larger than life in life, was in two bundles in a basket.
Chinese New Year will feel that little bit emptier when I go home in February. I don’t doubt that it is because I’m over here, away from home, that I can maintain some kind of emotional distance. If I were back home, I would feel the loss more keenly. Yet I do think about how strange it would feels that, if I am ever home again around Cheng Beng, I won’t have a grave to visit and hence, nowhere I can place a sense of Gua Ma. But perhaps that is how it should be. She never could sit still in life – always on the move. I like to think that now, she can be everywhere.
It was about 7.30pm on November 11 that Dad called. We’d just had dinner and I was settling down for the evening, and I started off the conversation by joking if this was one of his “toilet break” calls, since it was about 3.30am back home. When he said he had some bad news, I thought perhaps a family friend had died – and my heart gave a little start just in case it was Dusty or Lucky.
But no. It was Gua Ma. I certainly didn’t expect it. I had always thought of her as a woman death would have to fight hard to take. She was always so strong, so formidable, so indomitable in both body and spirit. So to hear that she had died came as such a shock, I didn’t know how to react. And then it hit home and the dam burst.
I wept for many things.
For her, because she had lived the last two years of her life in a care home, away from the one that was familiar to her. Her mind was going – the early stages of Alzheimer’s or dementia – and couldn’t take care of herself. But she didn’t understand why she was in care and was always asking to go home. I cried because I wondered if in her reduced state, she had died feeling unloved and uncared for. She had had such a hard life, and it just felt so sad and tragic that in her last days, she had to relive it all over again – as she regressed, she would constantly worry about money.
For Mum, because I knew she would take it hard – she had taken on herself so much of the responsibility of caring for Gua Ma over the last 10 years. Because I knew how difficult it had been for her to make the decision to put her own mother into care. It was like our very own personal version of King Lear. Gua Ma never understood – she always saw it as a betrayal of filial piety, when it was exactly the opposite. Despite all the awful things Gua Ma said to her, Mum never stopped caring for her. It must be double heartbreak to know your parent is deteriorating and is not fully aware of what she is saying, and have to suffer the pain of those very cutting words.
For me, because I had just lost my grandmother, my last link with my past. I’ve only known two grandparents my whole life, and it is so strange, even now, to think that this was someone who had seen me grow up. I certainly didn’t know how long my grandmothers would live, but feel very blessed that there was one for me throughout my adult life. I felt like I had lost a piece of my history. I also wept because it was the second death in the family within a year, and I felt I was losing my loved ones faster than I was ever prepared to let them go.
I was not as close to Gua Ma as I was with Ah Mah, and it was for that that I grieved above all. As a child, I was always reluctant to go visit her, because I thought her bossy, loud and domineering. But as I began to see her with adult eyes, I found her wise, with a sly – and often crude, in the way that only Hakka women can be – sense of humour. She looked out for her family first and foremost, and when I thought of what she went through to bring them up – walking all the way from Kuala Lumpur, losing two husbands, giving up two children and losing another two – I couldn’t help but feel pride and amazement. For 10 years, I’d thought of dragging Josh back home with me on weekends, so we could both talk to Gua Ma and find out more about her, about how she came to Kuantan, about what life was like for the family. It never happened, and it’s never going to happen now. She had a remarkable life, and I just feel so sad that she never really told us about it and that she wasn’t really given the chance to do so. I just hope she knew she was loved.
I used to get really annoyed with Gua Ma at times, but I’m glad she lived as long as she did so I could get to know what she was really like. Even as we celebrated Christmas this year, I thought back to the last one – how fast a year goes by – when she was at our house and clearly enjoying being out of the care home. She was never afraid of speaking her mind, whether asked for her opinion or not – and last year she berated a few of our neighbours for just coming over for the Christmas food and not even bothering to speak to their hosts. She was inadvertently funny and if she found something funny, she’d let out a very hearty, loud guffaw. She had the crudest, most amazing vocabulary when it came to swearing or telling someone else, an attribute that never ceased to amuse and appal us in equal measure. She was incredibly independent – many people in town have an enduring memory of her cycling around well into her 70s (no mean feat given the roads in Malaysia), and after she had her kneecap replaced, she would take the bus in to visit friends. She wasn’t one for sitting around in one place.
I have too many memories of Gua Ma to list, and I think it says a lot that most of them make me laugh. I last saw her alive on April 28, a few days before I left to come here. When I saw her again last month, in the coffin, it just felt surreal. She didn’t look anything like I remembered her. To be sure, in the one year I had been here, she had lost a lot of weight and had had her hair cut short, but she still looked so different. Knowing what we did of her, I almost expected her to sit up and grumble, in the same manner she usually did over restaurant-cooked food, “You paid how much for this coffin? It’s too small! I could make a better one!”
I had done all my weeping on Gareth’s shoulders and on the flight back, and when I looked at Gua Ma, I just felt overwhelming sadness and loss, because of what she would never be able to tell us now, and of what I would never know or tell her. It was a feeling compounded at the funeral. When Ah Mah died in 1993, it was difficult seeing the coffin being put into the grave. But it was even more difficult seeing Gua Ma’s coffin being wheeled into the incinerator at the crematorium. It was a horrible place to be, so bereft of emotion, built to drive home the pain and anguish of your bereavement, it just felt so wrong that a woman who had been so full of life would have her final goodbye there.
As we drove away, the wisps of black smoke floating out the chimney, I thought, that’s my Gua Ma, and said a quiet goodbye. I did the same when we took a boat ride out into the sea to release her ashes the next day. I now understand the poignancy of the act – I found it hard to believe that all that remained of Gua Ma, who was so much larger than life in life, was in two bundles in a basket.
Chinese New Year will feel that little bit emptier when I go home in February. I don’t doubt that it is because I’m over here, away from home, that I can maintain some kind of emotional distance. If I were back home, I would feel the loss more keenly. Yet I do think about how strange it would feels that, if I am ever home again around Cheng Beng, I won’t have a grave to visit and hence, nowhere I can place a sense of Gua Ma. But perhaps that is how it should be. She never could sit still in life – always on the move. I like to think that now, she can be everywhere.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
