End of a legacy

Hmmm..lots of stuff has being happening for the past week or so. Gong gong (my maternal grandfather) passed away on the 27th. On that Sunday night itself, we took a bus back to Taiping since the cremation is happening on Tuesday. It all happened really fast. Just 2 months ago during the September semester break, he was just receiving me at the bus terminal. I think somewhere in the middle of October, it was found out during the medical examination that he was at the terminal stage of pancreatic cancer. He wouldn't have pulled through to December if not for a bypass operation. After the operation, his whole body strength just siphoned away from him, and the jolly rounded old man became quite skeletal (just like Ah Yeh [my paternal grandfather] in his last days).

I'm not exactly say, a fan of my maternal grandparent's way and outlook of living as compared to my paternal ones. I just find my paternal grandparents to be much more vibrant and full of life and their culinary skills were a source of inspiration. My maternal grandparents on the other hand, were dull, boring and business-minded like, unwilling to take risks and seldom look beyond the world outside their small town. Nevertheless, Gong gong's absence is do felt. Somehow the optical shop doesn't feel as like before because of the master of the house is not in there. It's like a body without a soul. Both are synonymous to each other and their existence was tied to each other. All over the place contain his handwriting on pieces of papers and price tags, but somehow, there's just a heavy emptiness in the shop. Usually when I stare at the walls of the aged shophouse, it's almost instantaneous that you will think of that aged man being somewhere around the house doing one of his fuzzy business. But right now, he's just nowhere around and would never be there.

Honestly, this was the first time I've actually came face-to-face with the dead body of a family member. My paternal grandparents had passed away 3 to 5 years ago, but family circumstances prevented me from attending their funeral. Anyways, it's just a weird feeling inside me when I see Gong gong inside the coffin. Perhaps he would finally get the answer to life's ultimate question on afterlife. All his life he had an extreme paranoia to preserve his own security and has a high opinion on his well-being. But I guess in the hospital, he would have realised in the end that there's nothing he could do when the time really does come calling.

I've never cried once all these years but when his coffin passed by the optical shop, tears started to flow quietly from my eyes. It dawned upon me that it was symbolic when it passed by because that was the last time the master of the house would have his physical bodily presence there. I guess he would have wanted the last look on his fortress. All the memories, the history and a legacy in its own way had halted. Amidst the stocks of spectacles, lens-cutting machinery and the testing room, they lay silent without the master wielding them. The optical shop would never be revived again. Its story ends there with a good 30 years of operation. The curtains have come down on the empire.