Last night, my great grandmother left us to be with God. She went peacefully in her sleep. No pain, no anguish.

When I received the message from my mother last night, I was quite taken aback. But I did not really come to grasp with the fact of losing a relative.

Earlier tonight, I went for the wake. I did not look at her. And my memory of her (obviously) won't fade because of that. How my lao ma looks, I will never forget.

I remember when I was young, I was taken care of by my lao kim. My mother called her ah kim. Haha. But I was too young at that time and did not know how to pronounce. And I ended up calling her ah mm. Lao ma wasn't a problem though.

I remember that ah mm will be my translator, and help me translate chinese words to teochew so that I could tell my lao ma. Or just tell her directly what I was trying to say. Haha. Very possibly, back then, my teochew was ten times stronger than it is now.

Lao ma is one hell of a strong woman. She was still doing housework at the age of eighty-five, eighty-six? Many times a day, she'll go down to the void deck, take a walk, chat with the other people there.

Then she suffered a stroke, and age seriously caught up on her. She became wheelchair-bound, didn't recognise people, couldn't count and was really frail.

There was once I remembered, though, warded in Alexandra Hospital after a fall, she started asking for me, and thought that one of her grandsons was my brother. When we went to visit her, however, she couldn't recognise us. Possibly cos she hadn't seen us for too long. We've grown too much to be the Lixia and Lihao she used to watch over.

Looking at the red eyes of my aunts and mother, I couldn't help but feel the urge to cry as well.

可是，要哭却哭不出。 要笑也不敢大笑。。

Everyone was trying to uplift the mood, and not show their grief, yet unwittingly being betrayed by their eyes..

She was a much larger part of their lives than mine, far more amazing to them than me. She was the one who brought them to the market, leading them across those huge drains that lay over the canals, did what she should, and guided them into becoming the people they are today.

An amazing woman that left us. She left with a peace that could only be because God called her to His side.

I just pray that God would grant peace too to the people she has left behind. To the people who love her so.