Sometimes death can be a blessing. It can end a suffering that has been ongoing for a lifetime. Especially when he had been the unlucky one to develop colon cancer, like his late father. Especially since the past 3 years of his life was spent in a morphine-induced comatose.
Was there a time when he had been happy? When was the last time he smiled that loopy smile?
I only recall a sullen-faced uncle whose epilepsy had prompted my late Tok Bak to ground him his entire adult life. He had believed it was for the good of his child that this was done. Uncle was always getting into fights with impatient strangers who did not understand his disability and hurting himself by falling on roads and down stairs.
But in death Uncle spoke to us. Words that he was not able to express. Words like "Please take me home". He didn't care very much being stuck in Bright Vision home since my grandparents' death but there was simply no one who could care for him amongst Mum's siblings. Everyone had a life to run and he just didn't fit in.
A wise woman once preached "there is no touch like that of a Mother's touch, it is full of love". But Tok Mak left us 8 Jun 99 and Uncle probably hasn't been touched with love since then.
So when we saw his final resting place read N1-3, 553... everyone was stunned. Unit 13, block 553. My late grandparents' home address, where he spent his entire adult life cooped up in. You've gone home now haven't you Uncle?
What was his life about, I wondered that morning when I got dressed for the funeral rites. He was sickly as a baby, was epileptic since he was a child, a 'liability' to my grandparents and his siblings, no CPF, no wife, no kids, nursing home, smoker... all these labels which determined his sad life.
And then when I saw all of us together again in the mortuary, holding on to each other in our guilt for not visiting him ever or as often as we should, I realised one thing. He is the magnet that pulls this laissez-faire family together, family members who otherwise would be too busy to catch up with each other.
So in his memory, I invited everyone for a post-funeral lunch at Fish & Chicks. Faces that I see perhaps a little more than once a year but whom I call family. And we went back to my parent's house afterwards and we looked at all the old dusty albums in the drawers with the high-waisted jeans and the big hair and the garish makeup. And Uncle was missing in every single one of the albums as though he was an embarrassment that cannot be seen.
And so here I declare that I have a disabled Uncle, I was terrified of him as a child and perhaps that made me postpone each time from paying him a visit at Bright Vision Home, even as I drive by there every evening on my way home from work.
But he remembered me.
I know Sofia saw him the night of his death, half an hour before I got the call from my brother. He stood by my window in the darkened room. He was observing us and she sensed him and stared back. She didn't cry so I was not scared. But I whispered superstitiously into the dark "Go away whatever you are and don't bother us" and read the holy verse in her ear.
Thank you for visiting me and looking at my children. Thank you for remembering me even though I have forgotten you.
May you rest in peace Uncle and remain always in our prayers.