I kinda forgot when my grandma passed. It was the end of last year, probably in October or November.

I saw a student's photos of her celebration of her grandma's birthday. It made me think of mine.

When she was in and out of the hospital, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know whether I should pray for her or not. She hasn't been very happy lately.

If she lived, it doesn't seem like she's happy. She always lamented that everyone is elsewhere, it was very quiet at home. She always envied others whose homes were filled with family members, always bustling with activity and busyness. Yet when she stayed with my uncle, whose house is also busy with people, she wasn't completely happy too.

The last time I remembered speaking to her was when she was quite alright. I was with her at her own house where she loved to be and I just finished work so I was terribly hungry. I was waiting out with her because she was afraid of being alone and we were waiting for my aunt to be back. Even when she was weak like that she would bring out snacks and cookies that she could find in her house for me to snack on.

She has always been a cheeky one who loved to have fun. I remembered her sneaking a tiny rubber band tied up packet of honey tapioca chips which she had been hiding in her bag from her great grandchildren who always dug in her bag for treats. I always wondered how she manage to enjoy those hard tapioca chips with her fake teeth.

On that particular day when I was waiting out with her, I suddenly asked her about her past, her family. What she told me both surprised me and also made me sad. Although my aunt said it wasn't such as sad story but when she told it to me herself, it was filled with much sorrow and her voice broke when she said it. She even clenched her shaking hands trying to hold back her emotions.

I learnt that she is actually a Cantonese and not a Hokkien. She got adopted into Hokkien families. Her version of the story was that her eldest brother who is a Chinese doctor left her or sold her to a family and her family never went back to look for her. Her father is also a Chinese doctor but he went back to China or something. I think what my aunt said, what was being told to them when my grandma was younger was that she was left at a neighbour's place temporarily or something (I can't remember the details) and her eldest brother traveled the seas to China and didn't make it or something. Then to she has other brothers who went to look for her but couldn't find her because the family that adopted her relocated. Something along the lines.

When she was telling that story, she was feeling all the rejection of being abandoned. So at that point she wasn't happy. She isn't well for her to travel which is something she loves to do. So I didn't know what to do. Even when I arrived at her deathbed, I didn't know what to do. My aunt told me to hold her hand and talk to her but it doesn't look like she is aware anymore because it looks more like the machine is helping her to breath and there wasn't a heart rate monitor to show her heartbeat like in movies. In the end it's just the doctors turning off the machine that helps her stay alive. I didn't know how many percent of her body is still functioning. I didn't know what to say to a dead or dying person.

I don't know if it is cruel to think that she has suffered enough. She wasn't happy. Some people around her weren't happy.

I miss her when she was happy. I'm sad that she wasn't happy during the end of her life. I kinda wished she could have left the world in a more peaceful way without pain. Like dying of a natural death and not dying out of pain of a sickness. She wasn't in pain but dying being hooked up everywhere on machines doesn't look very comfortable.

I wasn't particularly close to her. But still, she's family and she cared and she loved. Not sure how to end this but yeah, I just suddenly missed her.