Goodbye

I think it's funny how in life, significant events have a habit of happening all at the same time. Thus there are some periods in life where you find yourself swamped with things to do and other times when you feel like you can just die of boredom.

Last friday, my maid went back to Philippines for 2 weeks, and so I now have to do HOUSEWORK! In the past few days I have done laundry, ironing, folding clothes, sweeping floors, mopping and CLEANING TOILETS. And mind you, this is like my first time doing housework. Jiayi is all grown up now. I do feel quite accomplished! But doing household chores are extremely time consuming..today I took slightly more than 2 hours just to sweet and mop my downstairs floor.

Last weekend I also went to Malaysia for my cousin's wedding. Somehow everyone seems to be getting married this year.

I was supposed to come back on Sunday evening, but on saturday my mum got a call from my uncle, and we found out that my grandfather had suddenly become quite sick. So we rushed back as soon as we could on Sunday morning.

Early Monday morning around 2am, my mum got another call and rushed down to the hospital. Around 3am I received an sms from my mum, and just like that I found out that my grandfather had just passed away.

I guess it always comes as a shock when you learn of someone's death, especially someone so closely related to you. Although my grandfather is 91 this year and wasn't really in the pink of health, I never really thought of him passing away. He's just always... there.

I won't say I'm all that close to my grandfather. Especially in the past couple of years when his short term memory started getting affected and he got a little confused. Most of the time he couldn't recognise me and when he came over to visit he'd talk to me about his work and how he lost the car keys for his car, although he'd retired 30+ years ago and stopped driving soon after that.

I guess I was much closer to him when I was younger. I visited him every week and he came swimming with my family every sunday. I would watch tv with him every time he came over and he'd constantly tell my siblings and me how much we have grown since the last time he saw us (often a few days ago).

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people are close to their grandparents when they're young, but once we start to grow up I guess life and all it's busyness cause us to drift away. I guess I do wish I had spent more time with him while I could. Well that's how it is in life most of the time - you only miss things once they're gone.

rest in peace, gong gong.