After my grandma’s death, I started on a few books about death. This is not to relive that painful moment but to grasp on to my own eventuality. Death is bound to descend and I will need to learn to embrace it the best way possible.
My preparation of her death started when I noticed that my grandma started to sleep longer hours when she hit her 70s. My naive thoughts is that if I am able to track her sleeping hours, then I would know the approximate1 date and time of her death. Alas life is never live linear. Her sleeping time doubled when she suffered a series of mini-strokes and then almost reach 100% after a full stroke paralysing half her body .
My question went from when she would pass on to how she will like to pass on. As she slowly loses her mental capacity through the pandemic period, I know that she could no longer make that decision. I would have to mentally prepare to make the hard decision for her.
The way to decide for her is to look towards her life and use that to guide me. And for that I need to know who she is and what she represent.
Grandma:
My grandma, born 19292 grew up in a poor village in pre-independent Singapore, was given away at birth but was handed back to her original family when her foster parent died. During World War 2, her siblings and her stayed safe by swimming out into the sea3 whenever the Japanese soldiers came marching into their village. Her teenager years were spent trying to find food to survive.
After the ending of the war, the Malayan peninsula continued to be engulf in various warfare. By the 1950s, the Malayan emergency4 which started in 1948 was coming to a close. Peace ensued and my grandma married the police officer who she had met during the emergency period.
My grandma is 21 when she got married. Her first child died during labour. My dad the eldest was born in 1954. Life is generally good for police officers in the 1950s. My grandpa is one of the few people who owns a car and could drive their kids around the town of Singapore.
Life is still complicated as the triads and the communist still run parts of Singapore. But in downtown Singapore, my Grandpa reign supreme. He is known as Detective Ong to the triads and they do have to give him lots of face. My grandma riding on the coattail of my grandpa’s influence became the chief negotiator between the triads and the businessmen and somehow always manage to negotiate a good outcome for everyone. She thrived in her various mediation roles and soon became a sought after mediator for the various factions. Soon her services are required from the town centre to the far flung villages in Yio Chu Kang and Hougang. She never ever got paid for any of these work5. I think she just relishes on that adrenaline rush and the role of helping people around her.
The house of Dunlop street then Owen road6 also frequently become a hiding place for the on the run triad member and local communist party member. My grandma basically hang my grandpa out to dry by harbouring some people that the police may be after but who may better off being left in the street than off the street. She live a principled life, taking care of all the people regardless of their background, providing them lodging, food and a chance to repent and change. She has never afraid to really live her life.
As she grew weaker at the end of 2024, I somehow knew that the time is near for her. She is in constant pain. While I was taking care of her, she develops some wheezing in her lungs. I know that I must tackle the wheezing aggressively because my hand will be tight if the wheezing develops into pneumonia7.
I tried to get doctors to do a house call, but no one is willing8. The conversation usually descend to the suggestion that I should admit her into the hospital. I know she is unwilling and so am I. I struggled with the thoughts of a sure certainty of death at home or the possibility of life in the hospital. I doubt I wanted to see her intubated at age 93, with a bunch of doctor believing that they can make a better decision than I, for her. I also believed that she would be happy to let me decide.
Out of sheer luck, I finally found a doctor9 to agree to do a house call. The antibiotics he gave immediately reduced the wheezing and her laborious breathing. She almost immediately got better, ate well for a few days and then passed on in the morning of 2nd Jan 2025.
Good life:
Just like a good life, most of us wanted a good death. So what is a good death? How could something so negative be good? It could be thought as good if we understand that like birth, death is a natural immutable part of life. If we have choose to live life the best we can, then can’t we choose to die the best way we want?
But death is often cruel. Like birth, you have no say during the jaw of death. You may have options to decide your living part of your life, you definitely have no say at the beginning or the end. Most people who dies young, are usually ravaged by certain horrible accidents while most who dies old are usually ravaged by diseases. Few can or do have the choice to just close their eye and die in their sleep10.
The most important thing is that if one is unable to decide for oneself on how to die, could the decision be effectively decided by another? Could a doctor who is usually hell bent on saving life be depended upon to decide on your death? Would he or she make the best decision for you?
It is often known that someone who is dying often hold on to life while waiting for someone precious to return or a particular festival before passing on. While many would believe that the person who is dying may be fearing of death, the correct feeling should be that of sadness. Sad because they are going and leaving many beautiful memories and people behind.
If doctors cannot be depended upon , maybe it shall be left to me. The one who loves her deeply enough to understand that she would have wanted a certain dignity to her death. The decision meant that I was the one who decided to slowly let her organs fail and let her fall off into that deep slumber. I could have been faulted for killing her, a decision that most doctor would not have made.
My death:
If dignity of death is important to me and euthanasia seems a good way to go. After death, I really wanted to be either eaten by the vultures or decompose back into earth11. Burning and radiating me out into space seems too energy consuming and crude. Thou we are all born from the stars, there is really no need to send me back into space once again.
On second thoughts, like birth, death is not for us to decide. At death door, most of us will be physically too poor equipped to decide on how to die. I could only hope that my daughters would have read this page and know the pain I have gone through in my decision process to let their great-grandma die in dignity and they would also let me do so too.
Reads:
I have read these books in the following order. You could read them and understand how the impending death change some of these man or you could just be living life so intensely to have already understood that what is important is not a good death but a good life well led.
So go forth and be around the people whom you love, start doing the things you want before the eventuality happens.
Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life By Gene O'Kelly · 2005
When Breath Becomes Air By Paul Kalanithi · 2016
How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter By Sherwin B. Nuland · 1994
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
yes, i did really track her sleeping hours for many years till the arrival of my kids upended that record keeping.
year of the great depression in the United States. I can understand why my grandma is given away shortly after her birth.
it seems that they rather drown than be caught and possibly rape by the Japanese soldiers
On 24 June 1948, a state of emergency was enforced in the Colony of Singapore
money is never an issue as my grandpa became pretty well to do after returning from the war
which houses my grandpa, grandma and their 2 boys and 2 girls
pneumonia meant a high chance of hospitalisation and possibly death
which is complicated because it is the Christmas period and then compounded when they got to know of her age
a principled doctor whom I am forever grateful to
my grandpa did
lack of land space meant that is a pipedream