Overdue

My maternal grandfather used to stay over, when my family was residing in Kembangan, ever so often for a few weeks on end while i was in secondary school. Because of that he was also the grandparent my brothers and i were closest to.

i remember how he used to teach us different card games and we would while the hours away playing gin rummy or poker. Though there were no bets to go along with each round, we were thrilled to bits nonetheless.

That is perhaps the enduring memory of my grandfather.

Last Sunday, i visited him at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. My mother told me that he was on the verge of death and, in her words, “could go any time”. I wrestled with whether or not to go. We had been close but since he stopped staying over and i started to spend more time outside my home as i grew older, that closeness had long since faded away. But i made the decision to go anyway. It would probably be the last time i saw him alive.

I’ve always hated hospitals. The stench of death and sickness lingers far too heavily for my liking. I leave feeling indignant after each visit to the hospital; partly because i am reminded that all this was not meant to be – we were never meant to die wasting away, dignity stripped!- and partly because everyone has come to accept it as part of life.

Death a part of life? The ultimate oxymoron. A most ironic juxtaposition.

So i saw him lying frail upon the hospital bed, the slight breeze from the fan beside him gently ruffling grey wisps of hair with every oscillation. He was shrunken. More so than when i last saw him during Chinese New Year. I would never have believed it possible had i not seen it with my own eyes.

But there he lay. Skin hanging loosely off brittle bones; his arms a deep red, almost black. Occasionally, he coughed and the phelgm rattled hollow in his throat. Wasting.

My uncles and aunts gathered round his bed as he was about to be baptised. My uncle had brought him to church just before he had suffered a stroke a year ago or so and apparently he had given his life to Christ then. Now that he was on the verge of death, my mom had invited the pastors from church to perform the sacrament of baptism.

As the pastors explained the significance of baptism and read out Scripture and prayed for him, my grandfather raised and lowered his hand mechanically. Raising it as a declaration to God, i think, and lowering it when the effort of keeping it up was too much for him.

I wondered whether he was fully conscious of his actions and as i sought the Lord in prayer, i prayed above all that he would be granted one blessed moment of consciousness that the declaration of his faith in Christ that is baptism would stand and be true. It was between him and the Father.

The pastor dipped her fingers into the bowl of water and applied it to his forehead. i watched as the rivulets of water ran down. What was left of the water was wiped away immediately because he complained that it made him feel cold. And then it was over. He was baptised – dead to his sins and raised in newness of life in Christ.

Who knows the precise moment when the dead truly cross over into everlasting life?

Who knows the precise moment when lifeless hearts are revived and renewed in Christ?

Who knows when faith is made real and accounted as righteousness to us?

Only You do, Father. Only You.

Just before i left the ward, i heard him mutter, the weight and weariness of his years filling every breath, “Shh…I need some rest. I need some rest.”