Goodbye...
With a heavy heart, I bid goodbye to my neighbour. Today I came home to see some square shape red paper paste on our lift wall, our corridor’s wall and outside my neighbour’s wall. As a Singaporean Chinese, I know very well what that means…
My neighbour is 87 years old but still very sturdy and fit at her age. She’s exceptionally friendly and chatty which helped in the building of our relations.
Sometime last week, I noticed I haven’t seen my neighbour around. It wasn’t hard to notice her disappearance as she’s really chatty and loud. I was kinda taken aback when my mum told me she bumped into auntie’s daughter and found out that auntie is in the hospital. She has Cancer.
However, the daughter mentioned that auntie was in no pain and was still very energetic in the hospital. The doctor gave them 2 choices; one.. is to let auntie under-go a surgery that has a 50-50 chance but if its the lower 50, she will passed away very quickly, second..leave the cells alone and she can live on until the cells spread to doom. Her daughter asked my mum for some opinions and my mum told her, auntie is old and might not be able to go through a surgery so why not let her live till her last days.
I am not sure which path her daughter chose but I know today, she’s gone.
I can’t say I’m extremely close to her but I feel a tinge of sadness. We have a little bit of trouble communicating as she mainly speaks teochew and I’m not good at it. She was a great neighbour to have albeit of the bad temper at times but mainly good and kindness for us.
It’s not hard to miss her; miss her cooking as she would share her delicious cooking with us, miss her help in watering our plants, miss her loud TV sound, miss her friendly smile when she walk pass, miss her trying hard to communicate with me, miss her loud slamming door, miss having her as she makes the block’s level a lot more lively, miss having her watch our home when we’re away…..just miss having her around in our neighbourhood. I believe many people in Tanglin Halt will miss her dearly.
Goodbye to a kind person who has lived a wonderful 87 years.
My deepest condolences to her family, my thoughts are with them.