Long Overdue Visit

This afternoon, I paid a long overdue visit to my mother's grave. It's been at least thirteen years since I've been there. While the Malay culture "encourages" us to visit graves of our beloved dead, I grew up in a family where such a culture is not strong...but then, my family is not the typical Malay family.

My father encourages us to think for ourselves and question cultural norms. Grave visit is not really necessary in order to pray over the dead. In Islam, grave visits are encouraged only so that we, the living, might be reminded of our own imminent death. In death, only three things do any of us take with us; our good deeds, the knowledge that we passed on to others, and the prayers of our children. As children, we should ask God for forgiveness and His blessings for our parents. But this need not be done at the gravesite itself but constantly in our prayers.

So anyway, what made me go? My late mother's relatives, my Aunt Helen and Uncle Allan, asked if they could pay respects...so my dad, step-mom, and I went there this afternoon to ensure that we got the right grave and to do a bit of cleaning around the grave before bringing them over next weekend.

Well, its not an exciting weekend...next weekend would be more exciting, I think, since I will start my scuba diving lesson. Really looking forward to that.

Peace,
Sid

Long lost relatives

Yesterday, I met my mother's family for the first time! For the longest time, I wondered if someone I met on the street could be my uncle, aunt, or cousins. Now, that questions is resolved.

To explain things properly, my mother, who was Chinese, was adopted by a Malay when she was one. The two families did keep in touch when she was young but lost touch after the racial riots in Singapore in the nineteen fifties. She had tried to find her biological family several times but unsuccessfully till her death. Similarly, with her family's efforts.

However, last Monday, a newspaper article appeared in the Malay newspaper in which her brother appealed to whoever has pertinent information of her whereabouts. My father later managed to speak to my cousin regarding my mother's passing. She (the cousin) decided that it was better to keep quiet about it during the Chinese New Year period but to my surprise, yesterday, about ten of them came over to my home. My eldest uncle and his wife, younger aunt, their children and two other cousins, children of my older aunts, all came. Seems like my mother had 6 other siblings, her being the 5th. Another surprise is that my family has a history of twins - my younger aunt has a twin brother living in Bangkok.

They were quite sad not to be able to meet my mother but I think they were happy to have met my siblings and me. My uncle did say that they would be organising a get-together with all of the relatives there since there are several more cousins who couldn't make it.

Anyway, I really am glad that I got to meet these long lost relatives. God is great.