the day my grandma died

It was Sunday, 27th July 2008 - a little after 3 pm. And it was my younger brother and my auntie's birthday. I got a missed call from my mom - I was chopping onions for the spaghetti sauce when the phone rang and didn't pick it up. She then rang my brother who was sitting across the table.

I was working the celery when my brother came to me and said, "Mummy called. Maktok's gone."

And I went, "Oh. OK". The celery-chopping didn't stop. Now that's certainly not a Hollywood-movie response to the news of a death of a loved one. That's just me.

I'm the Queen of Delayed Telecast when it comes to emotions. Whenever I receive bad news, I will almost always have no reaction. And the worse the news is, the lesser reaction I will have. The day my grandfather died, I was fine as hell. At the funeral, I peeped when they were preparing the body for burial, that night I slept well. The next day I spent the whole day sobbing in my room.

Just as this incident, I actually finished making the potato salad and spaghetti before the trip back to BP. The Diver was nice enough to drive us back. In hindsight, it was a wise decision because I was really not in the state to drive at all.

Midway to Batu Pahat, I bawled my eyes out and told The Diver satu benda yang memalukan, "I slept with my grandma until I was twelve." There it was, my Delayed Emotional Telecast.

My grandma. She was a lot of things to me, a mother, a friend, a confidante, my masseuse (when she was stronger), the one who spoils me rotten. For someone her age, she's very very open-minded. I was afraid of breaking her heart when I got divorced. But instead she was the one who consoled me, "What's the use of you staying on with a man like that? You don't need to please everyone in life, you must always remember that," she said, while stroking my hair. I heaved many sighs of relief in her presence...

Her reaction was a stark contrast to my mom's.

I miss my grandma terribly. I didn't make it for the funeral. When I arrived, it was already over. I didn't get to see her for the last time, and bid that forever farewell. But I will remember the smile on her face when I visited her with The Diver late last month.

She knows how truly happy I am.