Farewell

The man whose back view is so ever familiar which I woke seeing every morning in the past.

The man who insisted on using socklings to make his personally brewed premium coffee.

The man who I used to communicate with, with my half-bucketful of Hainanese words.

The man who would wave back enthusiastically at me when I do that at him.

The man with the purest and innocent smile.

Today, I saw this man once again. The two main differences were that, he was lying in a wooden box instead of the bed I always see him lying on. And that, he was no longer responding when I called out to him.

He looked so different as compared to the him who would always smile at me when I visited him. Just slightly more than a month ago, we were celebrating his birthday. I remembered the tired look on his face when I pushed the thin, old man back to the nursing home at the end of the joyous dinner. I remembered saying a last goodbye to him on that very day, I never had the chance to do it, ever again.

When those cold hard nails were knocked in to seal to wooden block today, I was overwhelmed with emotions, very negative ones. Flashbacks of memories with this man was playing non-stop in my mind like a spoilt DVD. Sniffing were heard all around me. A familiar warm fluid wet my pair of eyes, god knows how, I managed to stop them from rolling down my face, which was already a representation of what's on my mind: immerse sadness.

This man is a father of seven,

A great grandfather of four,

A grandfather of mine.

Nevertheless, I know he's living a better world that's free of sufferings. Ah Gong, 安心上路

This further strengthen the belief in my personal motto: why choose to be sad when you can be happy. Life is fragile and short, we should always be enjoying every single minute of it because you never know when it might end. At the end of day, life is still beautiful, and the sky is still blue, but with the only difference of my grandfather's blessings from the clear blue sky.