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Update: Another Send-Off

I don't know what to say, really.

Three years in a row - 2017...2018...and now, 2019 - we've been performing the rites to send a family member off to another world around the same time of the year.

Speechless.

Anyway, my grandmother was considered a Centurion, hence, it was treated as a form of 'celebration', a life lived well and long.

The thing with it is that it's tiring for everyone and work is piling up. I'm being hit by anxiety even as I am typing this at 12.18am because I have to wake up at 6.45am for the funeral.

And yet, here I am, trying to update as many things as possible, completing some edits, and planning for tomorrow. I don't even know if I would be awake enough to do anything significant tomorrow.

Well, I'm off to bed now. As it is, my sleep-wake cycle is out of whack and I am no light sleeper.

We'll be sending grandma off tomorrow to her final resting place. It's going to be another strange Chinese New Year next year - no more grandma/great-grandma calling us in her slight Chinese-accented lisp - Mar-ser...Jeu-sua...Ja-led.

She'll be, honestly, in a much, much better place. May her soul finally rest in peace.


Edit: Mar 29, 2019

Life reminds me, once again, as if it didn't do its job properly before this, that life is short. That we are not meant to live in this world forever.

Hence, whatever time that we are given today, right NOW, is not to be taken for granted.

Serene walkway at the memorial center
We wandered around the memorial center in Shah Alam and wherever we looked, there were beautiful cul de sacs lined with hints and reminders of people who used to share this planet with us. The place was a sordid reminder but also a wonderful bard offering lilting reminders of what life is really about.

One of those pictures staring back at us was one of my cousin who suddenly left us at the age of 45 last year. There's still a sore blue-and-black spot in our hearts where her departure gut-punched us.

Young or old, we will leave because this is only our temporary home.

Even as we are 'celebrating' the mortal liberation of my 97-year-old grandmother, we're actually days away from celebrating the BIRTH of my 2 wonderful boys and my mother.

Life and death clashing at the confluence of our existence.

Plant on a table against a backdrop of tiled roof of the memorial center
People who leave us has completed THEIR missions and we must continue ours. And when we do, we will all meet again in the other realm. We will meet again.

Signing off,
Marsha

p.s. This post would have to do without grammar checks or edits. I don't have the energy for it. 😅
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