A Memory Lost

Like many people around us, especially in an Asian context, a grandmother is usually the most notably respected figure within our family circle. Like mine, they were always there to shelter us from storm, and the buffer when our angst parents wants to reprimand us. They were always be there, forever armed with age old wits and everlasting grace.

Though flaunting all those traits that I've mentioned, my grandmother seemed a little more beaming with strength and grit. Having lived through a war, burying 3 of her own children, catastrophic racial riots, and raising her remaining children through the drug filled 60s, she somehow managed to see through the tough road at hand, painting her life picture, dotted with bliss and sorrow.

Growing up in the same house, I noticed many people remembering her in their own unique ways. Be it her demanding discipline for upholding strong family values, patience, undying love and compassion or even her accommodating nature amongst many countless positive traits, I choose to remember her in another light.

As a very young boy, full of questions and constantly observant, I've always pondered what hardship or immense worry could have casted those dark wrinkles on her angelic face, like shadows, being casted upon deep dark valleys. Never one to talk about her sorrows, "What do they know?", she'd mutter, starring at my late grandfather's portrait, as if whispering to him. She found a way though, to kerb her pain. Cigarettes.

I could still picture her sitting on her favourite dark blue velvet couch, cigarette wedged loosely, as if hanging from dear life between her lips. She took deep breaths as she inhaled the smoke, rarely battling even an eyelid during those brief moments that she coveted. Perplexed with the cacophony of thoughts straying inside her, she seldom flicked the ashes too. She would allow it to accumulate like solidified dust, only for its own weight to eventually scatter it down on the floor. It must be devastating, my young mind questioned, the thoughts churning through her mind.

"Come here", she'd beckon out to me, interrupting me from my playtime. "Take this $10 and get me a pack of Kent lights, a loaf of bread, and please buy yourself something too", she would say, as she placed the note firmly unto my little palms.

I relish days like these for I enjoyed being out of the house for that brief few moments. I'd run down that sorry excuse for a hill, with the wind gushing in my face, refusing to slow down my pace until I reached that humble store at the end of the road. Torn and battered from the outside, the store stood sturdy over the years. it had pebbled stones for a floor, and the cash register was nothing but an old rusty Milo tin, fastened to an elastic spring that was riveted to one of those heavy wooden beams.

The store Uncle, a man in the twilight of his years, seemed energetic for his age. The wrinkles and scars that decorated his body seemed like an epic tale, begging to be told. He placed a pack of Kent Lights onto the wooden counter, almost reading my mind. I grabbed the load of bread closest to me, and hurried quickly to the rows of candy, picking my favourite one out.

My grandmother would usually reward me a dollar to run her errands. Initially, I'd spent the money the very next day at school. Usually on unimportant stationery, or snacks. But as I grew older, and the $1 note ceased in production, I began to cultivate the habit of saving. not for a rainy day, but rather a hope, that these little notes, that I wish to keep forever, shall remind me of her. It comforts me to know, that when my grandmother is long gone, I still have something, which her bare hands touched before.

Many moons later, as I had a family of my own, I was appalled at the reluctance of my children refusing to run me those simple errands, on this particular day. Glued to their video games, even the convenience store two floors below the apartment, seemed worlds away. Useless twits I'd tell myself as I ran the errands myself.

I climbed the stairs, with my purchase wrapped in a plastic bag, and recalled my youth as a boy running up and down that hill and decided to rummage my cupboard for that old brass tin, where I kept all of the money my grandmother gave me a long time ago. Though dusty and rusted, it still looked majestic to me. Never in my life had I taken the time to count all that money, and in an instant, I became that eager little boy I once was. I closed my room door shut, and emptied the contents unto the floor.

The smell of old money seeped through the air as it brought back all those memories as I counted them one by one. Then there was this particular note half blotched red with blood. I remembered that day particularly well, for I tripped and fell on my way back from the shop. Fearing a beating for staining my clothes, I used the note like a tissue, dabbing my slightly bleeding elbows. How time flew I thought. Twenty odd years worth of errands, and $1016 richer, I gasped in utter bewilderment!

I squeezed back all those money into the tin and placed it near the wall of family portraits, right under that of my grandmother's, and silently prayed for her, closing my eyes and imagining her shining a toothless smile back on me.

That very night, as tragic as it may sound, my apartment got burgled, though no one was harmed or awake when the crime took place. There wasn't much that the thieves made with less for a couple of mobile phones, a laptop, and a few cheap fakes for paintings. But they did got away with that brass tin, nestled by the portrait on the wall.

That morning, as I sat at my favourite dark blue velvet couch, smoking a cigarette, I questioned the irony of it all. To have such a saddened end to a legacy of memories between grandmother and grandson, robbed from my grasp was not easy to fathom. My wife didn't tell me how devastatingly beaten I looked that morning until a few days later. She didn't have to. From that moment, I knew what it felt to have been stripped bare...and let go of something one loves so dearly.

(FYI: This is not a true story. My grandmother is still alive and kicking. I pray for her long life. This is just my way, of saying how much I appreciate the little things that she does for me.)