I Love You, Thank You.

“Hey Merlion, can you come out for a while? You have a call from your mother…” 

I was at my school’s orientation camp when I received the news that my beloved grandma had slipped into a coma and was rushed to the hospital. I dropped out of camp immediately to rush to her, tears flowing uncontrollably down my cheeks the entire journey on the cab to the hospital. We knew her time was coming soon but I thought she would’ve lasted till I returned from my orientation camp. 

She passed on a few days later, not waking up from her coma for me to have the chance to tell her that I loved her, and to thank her for looking after me and bringing up my siblings and me. That was my last regret; I never got to express in person my love and gratitude while she was still alive. 

But, even though I didn’t get to see her in her last moments of life, I had the fortune to see her in the first moments after her death. 

Shortly after her passing was certified by the doctors, my grandma’s body was wheeled into a small holding room at the end of the ward. We said our last tearful goodbyes as our new reality of life without Ah Ma slowly sinked in. When we were done, the elder family members left the room to discuss her funeral arrangements. Us, kids, stood outside the room and waited around in case the elders needed us to run errands. 

I stood there, still staring at the door that separated us from my grandma’s lifeless body. “Ah ma has passed away”, I told the other part of me that was still in disbelief, “She’s gone.”.

Right at that moment, I saw my grandma fly - and I meant flying through the door of the holding room, towards the right and through the walls into the corridor of the hospital’s ward. She was covered in a silvery-blue glow and looked as if she was radiating light of her own. She had the biggest smile on her face. In that instance that I saw her, I had a sense of pure happiness from deep within me and the words “I’M FREE!!” forming in my mind. I think that that was the moment her soul left the body after being trapped in a comatose state for a few days. It had discovered the new found freedom of movement and perhaps, even the ability to fly around! That very short glimpse of her brought great comfort to me, at least I know for real that she is happy now. 

I would catch a few more glimpses of her at her funeral. You know how at Chinese funerals, a chair would be adorned with the deceased’s clothes behind the altar and a portrait placed in front of the coffin? Multiple times I saw a shadow figure wearing grandma’s favorite blouse sitting in that chair, throughout the five-day funeral. I would then go up to the chair at the altar and whisper the five words I wished I had said to her while she was alive: “I love you, thank you.” and really hoped that she could hear me. 

The last time I saw her was almost a year after she passed on. It was a Saturday morning and I was asleep in my room. I had a lucid dream and was aware of my actions in the dream. 

In that dream, I was awoken by a strange buzzing sound in my room. I sat up in my bed and saw a window appearing on the blank wall directly in front of me. The window was made of wood similar to those you see on the old shophouses along Chinatown. After the window fully materialized, it opened into my room. I saw a vast darkness that appeared to stretch on forever. Occasionally someone would walk past the window on the other side and they wore olden day clothing like what you’d see in Mediacorp’s period dramas of pre-war Singapore, like ‘Wu Suo Nan Yang’. Strangely, even though the place was void of any light, the people who walked past the window looked like they were self-illuminating with their own glow of light. (The closest visual example of what I saw through the window would be the scenes of ‘The Further’ in the Insidious movie franchise.) 

Anyway I was just looking into the window and wondering what the hell was a magic window doing in my room when a familiar figure of an old lady walked into the frame of the window, turned around to face me and said “hello”. 

“It’s Ah Ma!” I kept calling for her in my dream, “Ah Ma! Ah Ma!”. She just smiled, waved to me and said gently “Hallow, ah boy, hallow”. I guess the regrets I previously had still ran deep because even in my dreams I instinctively shouted back those few words again. “Ah Ma! I love you! Thank you! Thank you for looking after me when I was young and watching me grow up! I love you, Ah Ma!” I shouted incessantly as if this was my last chance to let her know how I felt. She smiled contentedly and replied “I know, I know. I love you too. Ah ma has to go now. Okay, bye bye, bye bye.” With that, she took a step back, fading into the void as the magic window closed itself and disappeared. I then jolted awake to find myself seated in my bed like how I was seating in my dream. A dream… it was all a dream… but it felt so real. I asked myself if my Ah Ma was really here.

I got up and went outside. It was earlier than the time I usually got up on weekends but I couldn’t go back to sleep after that emotional dream. I decided to turn on the TV in the living room and waited for my siblings to wake up. Oddly enough, about 5-10 minutes later, my sister walked out of her room, earlier than usual as well. She looked at me, surprised to see me awake that early too. Then she said, “I just dreamt of Ah Ma.” 

“Strange, me too.” I chirped in.

We shared the details of our dreams with each other and settled down to watch the TV. A few minutes later, my brother walked out of his room. We nonchalantly asked if he had dreamt of our grandma. He was puzzled and asked, “How did you know?” 

“We dreamt of her too.”

I believe that morning, she came into each of our dreams to say goodbye for the final time. In that dream I finally heard her telling me that she knew I loved her and was ever so thankful that she brought us up.

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