Trust

The casket was opened. Boon’s mother, aunts, and cousins placed flowers inside. Lilies, white roses, gerbera, chrysanthemum.  “You look like Ophelia,” I whispered. It was a brief moment of silliness before the tears came again. 

Mourning is the saying of goodbye again and again, accompanied by denial of the death that occasions the saying of goodbye. With cremation, the body is sent away to be destroyed; also sent away and destroyed is the possibility of this denial. 

I went outside to where friends huddled around white plastic covered tables.  “Come and help us please,” I said.

As the casket was being prepared for the final journey to Mandai Crematorium, I could not bear to watch any more. I turned towards the doorway of the parlour and I was going to walk out when I came face to face with a kindly bespectacled auntie with a thick head of grey wiry permed hair. 

On the morning of that last day of the wake I noticed a group of elderly folk, mainly women, whom I had not seen before. I assumed they were distant kin. I had seen this auntie among the group. There was another auntie standing behind her, her hair was short and dark and she was of a slighter build. She too I had seen arriving with the group.

“You have a lot of heart,” the grey-haired auntie said in Hokkien, holding my hands, “Are you Hokkien or Teochew?”

“Hokkien,” I said. “I can speak Hokkien.”

Both of them looked at me with gentle smiles on their faces. The one with the shorter and darker hair stepped forward and took hold of my hands.

I cannot remember what she said but it was something along the lines of “take care” in Mandarin.

When I turned to my left, there was another auntie who seemed to be waiting to speak to me.  Earlier on I had seen her and an elderly man arrive with the group of aunties, trailing behind them.  I remember being curious about who they were, noticing that they did not speak to anyone.

This auntie also had short dark hair.  She clasped my hands firmly and I expected her to ask me if I was Hokkien or Teochew, to have pretty much the same sort of exchange I had just had with the other two elderly women. My attention was drifting away.  I was there but I was also beginning to be absent.  

The auntie looked deep into my eyes. I was surprised by the intensity of her gaze. Her eyes were soft and kind and bright. She held my hands and said: “Trust that what the Lord has done for you and Boon is the best thing for both of you. Trust in God’s plan for you and Boon.”

In her eyes I saw pure compassion and perfect understanding. I felt like a child who had fallen by the road and this auntie was a passerby who helped me up and took care of me, dressing and soothing my wound as if she were my mother. 

Listening to her, hearing the word “trust”, I was shaken out of my numbness and pulled back from despair. I was struck by the intensity and warmth in her concern for me. I was also astonished because she spoke in English. Her English was excellent; she enunciated all the consonants. And there was something else, something that I could not identify at that time.

A day later, I realized what it was. The auntie sounded just like me. She spoke in a voice that sounded like mine. Her choice of words, her sentences, her syntax and tone – her speech seemed uncannily similar to my own.  

She called him Boon. Not his Chinese name Junwen or his Cantonese name Zhun Mun like the other old ladies. It wasn't his full name Choon Boon that she used. She called him Boon, the name he identified most closely with. 

“Who is this woman?” I wondered on that awful day. A little way behind her I spied the uncle who was with her in the morning. He saw me looking over at him and he smiled, nodding ever so slightly. I did not see them again later on when we were at the columbarium, even though I thought I saw them trailing behind the hearse.

The incident melted away as the hours of that terrible day swept us along, and throughout the journey from the funeral parlour to the columbarium it seemed that I could barely keep myself together, wishing that all this was not happening, wishing that Boon was still alive.

Were they angels? I believe they were.

 (to be continued)