LE GRAND-MERE

So few adults ever have the opportunity to really get to know their grandparents. I have been so lucky to know you into my teens and to have developed such a firm friendship with you, in spite of (or maybe partly because of) the 50-year age gap. So much of this is due to your warmth and wit. I never shared the complaints I would hear from others about having to endure awkward conversations with their elderly relatives. You and I would sit and talk for hours, simply enjoying each other’s company, and I loved the weekends spent visiting you.

My sister and I stayed with you as young toddlers almost every weekend when my parents went back to Jakarta and during times when Grandpa was still alive, but our relationship really flourished once I was a little older and the two of us began to spend time alone together. You were always keen to hear about what was going on in my 4 year-old life, especially when I was experiencing things you never had – and to learn about life as experienced by my generation. I’m not sure my fudged explanation ever helped you to understand how my little brain actually works.

In my tender years, as I pressed you more, you began to share anecdotes from your past. You didn’t have an easy life, losing your father when you were very young, then coping with the effects of Grandpa’s traumatic war experience. But you still had a store of funny stories. I particularly enjoyed the one you shared with me about your friend who always had a good supply of stockings during the war because she’d receive them from the British GIs she hung around with – and would drag you along to church while she confessed “whatever she’d been doing to earn those stockings”.

It was a testament to your warm character that all the neighborhood friends spoke of you so highly – and even some of those who had changed jobs would still pop by to say hello. Taxi drivers always had a fond word to say about you when they dropped me at your house. You relished company and would strike up a conversation with anyone – in the local wet market; sitting on a public bench, or waiting for a ride. You were the one who rallied your friends to keep going out for regular lunches even as they lost their husbands and you all became increasingly frail. Even more impressively, if they weren’t up to it you’d simply go by yourself.

It wasn't apparent that at the age of 55, your death came as such a shock. But you deteriorated so suddenly after your fall just over a year ago that none of us had time to prepare for it. My mum (your daughter), your youngest daughter and son, Aunt Lily and Uncle John and I later admitted to one another that we had been missing you for years. Even now I occasionally struggle to accept that it has finally happened.

I will never forget those precious moments that you carried me to sleep, those moments that you taught me how to catch fireflies, fly a beetle kite by tying threads to their hind legs, even weekdays of marketing, choosing ingredients and how to prepare them.  Even when my parents were reprimanding me for being so foolish, so mischievous and incorrigible, you would never scold me.  You allow me to decide who I am, and what I choose.  Not a single time did you question my decision nor enacted on your seniority on a little soul like me.  When I complained on how ugly my toes looked compared to Cousin Shirley, you answered "these are not ugly, they are uniquely in a million ones, you are special", and taught me how to cut my curled in toe nails that is almost impossible to be called nails!  And every time when my mother chased me down the hall caning me, you would be there to protect me.  While everyone was singing praises about Cousin Shirley since she was the first born grand daughter and as sweet as a honey bee.  Standing beside her made me looked like a tom boyish gangster-to-be even at the age of 5; you however, would always boost my esteem in a gentle whisper that I will be a brave and courageous girl, no matter what others say about me or how I looked.

Outback Village

Years later, into my teens, when most of your grand-daughters were hanging out with boys and going to parties, I was still hanging around with you in the kitchen, spending time with you and Pecel, the border collie mixed that you had rescued since he was a puppy. And I would walked the long stretch of neighborhood garden while Pecel would go about roaming like a wild dog.  Times when my parents were away in Indonesia were the time I spent with you most.  Even though I am close to my mother, the kindred spirit between a grandma and a grand-daughter just isn't the same ball game shared with a mother.  

Your departure was the saddest to me in many ways, just like it was the saddest too to my mother, even though she wasn't your favorite daughter to start with.  Perhaps you were lavishing your love and warmth onto me where you wouldn't to my mother.  I have nobody to confront to anymore, silly things and topics that I wouldn't share with anyone, because I will be deemed as the dim-witted, unintelligent and unsophisticated girl that likes too much of a kampong care-free life.

You once said to me, "be yourself and be true to your heart".  "Think with your head, hear with your heart and feel with your body".  What you were really teaching me was despite of what the "weather of the day" is, rainy or sunny, cold or hot; I should not be afraid of voicing my opinion and staying true to myself even if it makes a mockery out of me.  And that despite of the "climate of the era" and what most believe that females are a less superior to the male species, women only has place in the kitchen, with the exception that beautiful women deserve a place in the dining table with men; I should defy intervention to do what I like and be courageous to stand up to what I believe in.

Grandma, you were the most beautiful woman in your era, you were rebellious, you questioned everything, you defy all the rules that caged you as a woman and as a person.  Now I know, where I got my stubbornness from, and my ever inquisitive nature, and I know where I got my love for nature and animals from.  It was YOU all along.  It took me so long to realize that I wasn't like my father, nor my mother in their demeanor. I might have inherited that galloping wild and adventurous trait from my father and a big heart and a giver like my mother; but the root of my characters...they bear an uncanny familiarity to you.

I will remember you as one of the most optimistic, cheerful and resilient people I have ever known. When I am an old woman myself, I know I will think of you and I’m sure will appreciate more fully what an excellent example you set. It will be in no small part down to you if I succeed in following it.

Your loving granddaughter.