I lost my mother last week. She passed away peacefully on 13 March 2015. When my brother called me on Tuesday with the news that my mother was in a coma in the Intensive Care Unit in the Kota Bharu General Hospital, my heart went cold with fear and anguish and my mind went fuzzy as I asked him the questions of how, when and why, in an effort to comprehend what went wrong that fateful day.
My mother, we were told by her attending doctors, suffered a brain haemorrhage that sent her into unconsciousness until her last breath in the early hours of Friday morning. In a way, it was a peaceful way to go. No pain, No suffering. She was 86 years old; but I can tell you, no matter how old a person is, the physical loss of a loved one is still very painful.
As I sat in the plane on my long and sad journey home to Kota Bharu (Malaysia), images of my mother and her life as told to us, flashed through my mind.
My mother's life had not been an easy one. Born in China in 1928, she lost her father while still a toddler. Her mother (my grandmother), a young widow then, had no standing in a conservative, Confucian household of her in-laws, so she took my mother to Malaysia and left her in the care of her uncle and aunty and their extended families, while she went out to work in another city.
My mother became a child slave in that family, doing all the household chores of washing, cooking, cleaning. She had a few years of primary education, but hardly given the time to play with other children. This went on until she was 16 years old, and when my father sent a matchmaker to ask for her hand in marriage, she agreed, as a desperate attempt to get out of her misery, even though she had not met my father!
Life as the wife of a small businessman with nine children in post-war Malaysia was also difficult; but one big consolation was that my father loved her and doted on her. As the children grew up, and life became easier, she faced another tragedy, one that she had not been able to get over for many years...she lost her husband, my father, when she was 51 years old. From then on, it was very much a lonely life for her, even though she had her sons and grandchildren living near her and we, the daughters, married to other cities came by to see her each year. But it was never the same for her.
I still feel a deep sense of loss whenever I think of my mother and memories of her will forever be etched in my heart. We will continue to honour her by living the examples she had taught us... to be strong in difficult times, to work hard, to be positive in everything we do and to love and care for each other, our siblings. Yes, her legacy lives on in all of us, her 9 children, 23 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren.
My mother's death has taught me to treasure our families, our friends, our loved ones who are with us today and whom we tend to take so much for granted. Her death also taught me to live simply ("we don't need much" she had always told us), to be more forgiving of each other, and to be selfless to help others less fortunate than us. All for the simple reason that one day, we too will have to depart, bade farewell and leave this world.
Rest in peace, my dear mother.
They who have gone, so we but cherish their memories,
abide with us, more potent, nay, more present than
the living man.
Antione-de-saint Exupery
My mother's 9 children and their spouses, with her grandchildren
and great-grandchildren (60 in total) at her funeral on 17 March 2015.
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