By SY Hsu (translated by Nevin):
Why only so little can I recall things about him?
Why only so few and far between did I go see him then?
Why the grin I saw on his face was when he no longer had any idea of who he himself was?
When Grandpa was about to be admitted to hospital, he, lying in the Emergency Ward, hemmed and hawed. At long last, he asked me to call my Mum and spoke to her over the phone, “There is nothing to worry about, my dear. A cold, and that’s all. I’ll be alright in an instant .” There I could hold my tears no more. The other day Grandpa was immobilised in the living room by such a grave stomach pain that he insisted Mum to fetch him some sort of gripe water. As hard as could be, he tried with his trembling hand to write the Chinese characters for “Seirogan” (a Japanese gastrointestinal pills), which ended up in some illegible lines and strokes even though Mum, the nurse and I made our best guess to figure out his twisted handwriting. At a loss for a while, we finally made a sense of what the words were but at the cost of an effort to suppress our sadness and pity for him deep down in us.
From cradle to grave is what it always is. But can the way to the ending be made in a less lonely manner? At least, the heaven should have let Grandpa know that those by his side were his beloved in the family, shouldn’t it? The answer, however, forever remains a mystery to us.
--- Further reading here (Editor’s Note: A very touching photographic story; highly recommended)
(Published with courtesy, the copyrighted photo and original verison of SY Hsu, a Taiwanese photographer introduced to readers in the first instalment)
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