Today you left us.

Dear Grandpa,

The past week has been a complete mess, topsy-turvy, haywire and just an endless period of painful madness for me - rushes of migraines, feverish sensations, soreness, low spirits, just all slammed into this body of mine. For someone who almost never falls sick, I thought I was going to crash. From the moment the throbbing migraines failed to stop after a day, but continued searing through different continents in my head, I knew something was terribly wrong. The fragility I felt was overbearing and immobilizing, till the point where I actually did something I never would allow myself to, which is to skip a lesson just so I could rest, as I headed back home with tears running down my cheeks unknowingly, uncontrollably. I questioned repeatedly what could possibly be so wrong that I felt so horrible, if it was a sign or an indication of a greater truth or omen, but I never connected that thought to you. But I'm not sorry yet I'm sorry for that. 

You were always a man of unbendable steel, and like my mum always said, prided yourself on your strength, obstinacy and undefiable will. Many times you almost passed, but somehow you would cling on to dear life and prove to us that miracles exist. As you grew weaker, we became increasingly prepared and forcefully numb for the worst. But strangely, my heart grew more attached and tender towards you and your presence. Occasionally I imagined you taking the final step and leaving us, and how devastated I would feel, but I never thought that this day would arrive so soon. I hurt not because I regret not having been able to get closer to you, as a child, a granddaughter or just as a kin. I hurt because after struggling for so long, challenging and defying nature and its forces, you took that last breath and slipped away. Right when I was there, but not there by your side. You made me feel so utterly unfilial to have been fretting and worrying about this foot of mine in the hospital when next door you were dying. I am just so irrationally angered. How could I have failed to notice that something was amiss when that dreadful migraine decided to set in when I entered the vicinity..?! 

My uncle said that you planned and calculated your departure well and meticulously - to leave when one of your sons had come back from the States, one of your daughters from Shanghai, and when my sister and I were just having a week off school. Did you? 

Then why do I feel so tremendously indignant that you decided to leave when my mum was coincidentally outstationed, when I was right there with you but not with you in the hospital caring about nothing more than my foot and completely ignorant about this last journey you were embarking on, and that when my sister and I rushed there you were already being sent off on a van? Why did you leave without letting me see you for the last time? I want so badly to be more loving, endearing and expressive towards you, besides just calling you when I see you and engaging in brief and short conversations simply because I can't speak the dialect. I yearn to just clutch your arm when you were hyperventilating and your body was twitching unbearably while you were barely conscious that one night in your ward, and silently tell you that I am here and we are all here around you, for you, all the time, for just one last time. I want to let you know how I'd always wanted to give you a big warm hug every Chinese New Year, but feared to do so because you always looked so blank and vulnerable, because you needed to rest. But the absence of physical touch never was a barrier to my love for you. You were supreme, distant, and mighty, but you were so lovely, and I always respect you with my whole heart. 

Till this moment I find myself still in disbelief. Despite the mad morning rush I have not seen you once, and I cannot bring myself to accept that you have really departed for somewhere we mortals cannot transverse to. I cannot help but think that you would somehow rise again and live once more, like you had always surprised us in the past. But this death certificate that I hug so tightly in my arms is the final verdict, however much I trust that the truth does lie sometimes. Deep inside I harbour a twisted hope that you would just find a bolt of energy to jumpstart that heartbeat, and wait till my mum gets back where she'll ask you for the umpteenth time to test your memory, pointing to my sister and I, "Who is the older one and who is the younger one?". And here you'd reply with that sweet cheeky grin on your face with the correct answer, "Because the older one is skinny and has big eyes while the younger one is bigger with small eyes". 

These days will have to be archived from now on, and remain as beautiful memories, as you leave us for a better, more comfortable world of relief and reunification with your other loved ones. There's never a right time to say goodbye, but when you do and now that you have, it's a conundrum of mixed feelings that cannot be deciphered.. It's perhaps time for us to let you go too, as unwillingly as we are. But wherever you are from this moment on, we will live and breathe with ease and assurance that you are still with us, forever and always.

Love Always,

Valencia.