Death?s humanising effect

Death’s humanising effect

By Anisah

Kota Kinabalu 3 December 2007

In the midst of family, I sent my grandfather on his last journey at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 27^th November 2007.  He was 89.  He slipped away in his sleep, of old age.  This is not an obituary, which will come later. 

I have never lived under his roof.  I was probably not his favourite granddaughter.  Deep down, I think he is proud of what I turned out to be.  He never said, but he was a man of few words when it came to love. 

I was glad that he did not suffer any chronic illness.  I was sad, and I knew I would miss him.  There will be no more Ah Kong to call upon when I visit my childhood city.  But I was glad for the health he enjoyed. 

When I bid farewell to him, by his side, by the coffin, my eyes watered, and I couldn’t resist the tears that came.  I rarely cried, various events in my life have thought me the futility of crying.  The time it would have taken for tears could have been used to remedy the causal situation.  The drama of tears!  The world does not stop for tragedies; in the midst of them, one has to pick oneself up for what would come after that.  In the name of pragmatism, are we losing our humanity? Was I? Had I? I don’t know.

As tears rolled down silently, I received a lesson in humanity, an encounter with the human side of death.  That behind the funeral ceremony, there are memories of life lived.  For what are us without our memories?  Perhaps that is the most valuable gift of my grandfather’s legacy…memories of a lived life.