For the first time in 23 years, I am spending Chinese New Year in KL. I’ll be honest, my sisters and I haven’t been enjoying our yearly CNY pilgrimage to Penang in recent years for a variety of reasons which I shall not deign to disclose, and to say that they are most envious of my ‘obligation’ to stay here in KL with my husband and his family would be an understatement. I was pretty excited about experiencing CNY in KL for the first time, even though I’d been repeatedly warned that it was dead boring because most people would be out of town.
I suppose unique would be one way of describing this CNY. Besides experiencing a new way of celebrating (Y’s family certainly celebrated it differently from mine) and preparing to give ang pows for the first time (by the way, we’ve come up with a perfect system to our ang pow distribution – only our siblings and those 21 and below are getting any from us), I heard news on the morning of CNY eve that my paternal grandfather had passed away.
At the risk of sounding insensitive, I wasn’t really upset. He’d been ill for a time now, and I barely knew him in the first place. He lived to a more-than-respectable age of 93 I think it was, and even though everyone knew it was only a matter of time, I don’t think anyone expected this sort of timing.
I sent my younger sister a text in the morning to see if my family were well on their way up north, and my sister replied at just over 11am to say that they had arrived and that ‘ah gong’, as we called our grandfather, wasn’t doing too good. Before I could even type out a reply, she sent another text to say ‘ah gong’s dead…’ I almost didn’t believe her at first. I thought she was being funny (though it wasn’t exactly joke-worthy material) or that she was, I don’t know, simply being blur like she always is. I mean, he couldn’t have died while I was typing my reply, could he?
It turned out he didn’t. He passed away at 11 in the morning, and my sister had been unaware of it until she after she sent me the text whereupon she quickly sent another to update me. I don’t know exactly what happened in Penang or what the reasoning behind everything was, but they did not want me to go up there and there was no proper funeral.
His wife and two sons had a short, simple ceremony and cremated him at 3pm. Just like that, it was over. I guess the reasoning is, it being the eve of Chinese New Year, they had to do it quickly because the subsequent four days were public holidays, and no one would have turned up for a funeral anyway. I don’t know, something doesn’t feel right about it, but hey, it’s not like my opinion was asked. Even my sisters didn’t know what was happening and they were right there in Penang. Maybe they’ll have a memorial service later on when the festivities are all over.
Anyway, I barely knew ‘ah gong’ like I said, and I’m not feeling loss and sadness so much as I am confusion and some anger as to how things were handled. I won’t bore you with details because I don’t even know them myself. I guess what I know is he was a good man, he smoked, drank strong Chinese wine with his dinner every night, and lived a long and healthy life up till his final year or so when he fell ill. Even in his 80s, he would go into town on his own, he was always fiercely independent, and up until his 70s, he went for regular walks every morning. He only stopped when it became too dangerous because of the rising number of snatch thefts, and his children refused to allow it.
Speaking of which, I wonder how my uncles and aunty are coping. I have several of them living in different cities in Australia, and they obviously didn’t have a chance to fly back to pay their last respects. No one did, really. Y and I made a trip up last October to visit because we weren’t planning on going up during CNY, and I’m glad we did. I don’t think he really recognized me but maybe somewhere in his heart, there’s a warm fuzzy feeling he might not entirely understand. I sure like to think so.
So my family is observing a period of mourning in Penang, which means no wishes of Gong Xi Fa Cai or giving of ang pows. But what about me? Am I supposed to refrain from wishing people and giving ang pows as well? Some say it doesn’t really apply to me because I’m married and therefore belong to my husband’s family, so to speak. Others say I should. I’m beginning to think everyone gets to invent their own customs to suit their conveniences sometimes. I think it’s more important how you treat someone when they’re alive than impose all kinds of strict regulations when they’ve passed on in the name of ‘honour’ and ‘respect’ anyway but hey, that’s just me.
I don’t mean to disrespect ‘ah gong’s’ memory or anything like that, but I am wishing and I am giving, just not to my family and my paternal relatives I guess. I didn’t think my maternal relatives should miss out but it’s only 12pm on the first day of Chinese New Year so I’m just going to play it by ear here.
I’m definitely not refraining from visiting my maternal grandmother though… she’s looking forward to it and maybe she’ll help shed some light on Chinese customs. But in the meantime, you guys should have a wonderful Chinese New Year. Gong Xi Fa Cai and may you collect many, many ang pows. Now that I think about the length of this post, maybe I should have put that right on top.
