The demise of my mom marks the end of a generation who lived through the turbulent time of wars and hardship.
Mom was born 1920 in a village in China. While she was 18 my grandma grabbed her from the Lee family to her house to be a bride in waiting. There she waited for an unknown man to come from Muar to marry her. Luckily my dad obediently traveled back to perform the formal wedding. After that he came back to Muar again.
When the second world war broke out, they lost contact. Over here my grand uncle urged him to marry a local girl but my dad did not agree. After the war, dad resumed contact and brought back money to buy land, then he left again. I was born without knowing who my father was.
Our padi fields were all confiscated later. Dad knew it was hopeless. He managed to get us to join him here and later our grandma came too. For his quick action I am really grateful otherwise we would have suffered during the great famine and the cultural revolution.
Mom was a remarkable lady of her generation. When the communists took over China, she did not send me to school. She said that it was all propaganda and preaching hatred in school. In stead she collected some books and taught me to write and read in Teo Chiew dialect under the dim oil lamp light at night. Later when I was in Junior Middle 2 I was really impressed by how she read the classic "祭蔡松坡文 " in Teo Chiew in her sing song manner.
She was strict with us when we were in primary school. She checked our exercise books every week. If our writing was bad she tore the pages that were written badly and ordered us to rewrite. Once she threw away my basketball shoes as she thought that I was too involved in the sport.
When more children came one by one she had a tough time. Those days she was always sweating all over having to deal with the chores and later an additional task of looking after my semi mobile grandma who suffered from a stroke and a fall. Dad was always a father in absence. He used to hang around in town chit chatting or playing cards, only came back for meals and sleep. It was mom who attended to our studies and shaped our character.
When we had our own families and careers, she transformed herself from a tiger mother into a "teddy bear". She no longer exerted any pressure on us, never demanding, always contented with what she had and was happy when children went back to see her.
She had gone quietly and her ashes scattered out of the Muar river estuary. We, the siblings will still talk about her. Love transcends barriers and time.......
