I got the news today whilst I was at site that my Grandfather had passed away earlier this morning. He had been in the hospital for the past year after getting a stroke and it didn't really come as a shock to anyone in the family. The past year must have been agony for him because he was paralyzed, kept getting infections, and during the last few days of his life, apparently had a lot of trouble breathing, so much so that, according to my sister who was able to visit him a few days prior to his passing, he was actually tearing up every time he tried to breath because of how painful it was.
I had only bothered visiting him once very early on after he got hospitalized and then never really made the time to do more visits after that. I knew he was in a bad condition, but a part of me also kept thinking that he was eventually going to recover, not fully of course, but be able to at least wake up and be well enough to leave the hospital and still have a few more years to live, to be able to converse with us when we visit him at my Aunt's place after he comes out and then hear him complaint about how horrible the hospital stay was etc.
I feel bad that I didn't bother to visit him, that for the entire year during his hospitalization, I barely ever thought of him, only occasionally asking my parents how he is.
He isn't someone who is very well liked in the family because he has a temper and he complaints a lot, but he has never once lost his temper on his grandchildren back when he was living under the same roof as me and my family, we hardly ever had conversations with each other, it was always the very basic...
... and me and my siblings would always nod very begrudgingly.
Back when I was still very young, whenever he came back from work, he would always buy my siblings and I candies or chocolates, that was what made us excited to see him return home, and our ungrateful ass would always express our disappointment when he would buy us Mentos instead of Kinder Surprise, and not one Kinder Surprise for each of us, we will only be happy if he buys the triple pack for each of us, talk about being ungrateful spoilt brats.
A few times, when we want to go to the nearby HDB mart to get some new toys, I would convince my brother to shed crocodile tears to convince him to bring us there, and it works probably 50% of the time.
Now when I think back about how it was like for him staying with my family, it probably wasn't great because he would always stay cooped up in his room, he barely sits in the living room to watch the TV there, he would always only come out for dinner when everyone else was done and he wouldn't eat at the dining table, instead, he would sit in the kitchen and have his dinner there, on a stool that is not of a comfortable height against the kitchen counter top, and once he was done with his meal, he will go back to his room again.
The very few times he would come out of his room and look for me, it was to ask me to help him fix his CD player or adjust his bedroom TV for him because it wasn't working properly, I don't mind most of the time to go help him, and every single time I enter his room, it just feels so stuffy and warm, I thought maybe it was the way he was using the room that made it so stuffy, but after taking over the room, I realize that it is because of the glass blocks in the room that makes the whole space so warm and stuffy, and he actually stays cooped up in the room the entire day.
At one point, because the house was running out of space to store our luggage, we decided to install a metal rack in my grandpa's room and put the luggage there, and it was only after I took over the room did I realize how horrible having that metal rack with all the luggage is, because not only does it look horrible and take up space, it makes the room feel like a storeroom.
When I think back, his golden years were probably not the best and he probably spend the last few years of his life before his stroke, feeling like he was not wanted by anyone in the family, not just mine but my Uncles and Aunties, who kept pushing the responsibilities to my Dad because he is the eldest son, eventually one of my Aunty took over and housed him at her place. Every time my family visited him, he will be happy that he is being visited, but then after a while, he will start complaining about my Aunty and call her a bad person, his own daughter who opened her house to him after my family no longer wanted to house him because he was actually bullying our helper at that time.
The sad truth is his personality makes him a quite unlikeable, so it was hard to give him any sort of affection, when you are nice to him, he doesn't really appreciate it and might end up finding you bothersome like he did with my Aunty.
That being said, I still do feel a little sadness about his passing because he is after all my Grandfather who did stay with under the same roof as me for pretty much the first 25 years of my life, but it is not a great sadness that makes me want to cry when I think about him, a lot of this sadness comes from feeling a great sense of pity towards how the last 6 to 7 years of his life after he moved out was spend alone at home, watching TV and not interacting much with his own family, and as far as I am aware, he didn't have any friends to hang out with as well, and then to spend the final year of his life in the hospital, bedridden and paralyzed for an entire year before finally letting go.
I feel bad because I don't feel as sad as I should be when a family member passes on. The funeral today was not a somber event, it felt more like a family gathering than a funeral, everyone was happily chatting with one another, no one was crying and I guess because everyone was expecting my Grandfather's death, we were more relief than sad that he has finally moved and and is no longer suffering in the hospital.
The funeral procession will be taking place this Monday, I had to move my work schedule around to make my attendance possible, as I should, this is the least I can do as his Grandson, and the least I can after not bothering to visit him during his hospitalization.
No comments:
Post a Comment