The Day The Music Died

My childhood came to an abrupt end in the wee hours of one October morning when I was six years old. I was awakened from my sleep by some unusual sounds. I opened my eyes to see my disheveled mother sobbing and rummaging through some drawers. What she was looking for, I had no idea. But when she realized that I was awake, she called my name tearfully and broke the news to me that my father had died. Ironically, it was not the message, but the sight of a crying adult - my mother - that was traumatic to the six-year-old.

The rest that followed was a blur. I remember the dark dinghy corridor of the hospital – or was that my imagination? I knew which hospital my father was sent to because my mother had blamed the hospital for not taking prompt action which might have saved my father from the fatal stroke that struck him that night.

My father’s death was a pivot point in my life. It was like the storm that blew Dorothy’s house away and left a scary new world in its place.

This is not about the emotional void left by my father – that would be a lie. I really was too young to realize the significance of what was happening but what I was experiencing then, at the funeral and the days that followed, was scary enough. As children, our security came from the familiarity of our surroundings, our routines and our trust in the adults being in control and making everything alright for us. Overnight, I was stripped bare of all feelings of security.

My father’s wake took place in the second wife’s bungalow which had a large compound that was suitable for holding a wake. We had never visited the house before this. At that time, I was not aware of the complicated ties within the family. All I knew was that we were in this strange place, surrounded by a sea of strange faces, doing strange things that I had never done before. We wore strange clothes, there were strange smells in the air and people were behaving strangely.

Amidst all the strangers, I remember how glad I was to see some of the relatives from my mother’s side as well as some of my mother’s friends. When I saw them, I smiled and greeted them, “Aunty”, like what I have always been taught to do. Surprisingly, though, they hushed me up, saying that I must not smile, that I should be crying. I remember thinking how unreasonable adults were, forcing me to cry when I did not want to cry, but at other times, I was scolded when I did cry. But obedience was my second name and so I tried hard to force some tears out… but I just could not cry.

Then there were other aunties who held me and told me that now I must be grown-up and remember to take care of my mother, my younger sister and brother. And true enough, as if through their very bidding, I grew up overnight.

Things continued to take strange turns after the funeral.

My father had died at 53 years of age - which was considered young - and so the family was in deep mourning. All of us wore black, white or dark blue attire for one whole year. We used a safety pin to fasten a piece of rectangular cloth on the left sleeve of all our clothes to signify our mourning status.

According to Chinese beliefs, the soul of the departed will return home on the 7th day after his passing away. I remember on that 7th night, all of us slept in one room and there were talks amongst the adults that some of them might like to peep out of the room to see if anything was going on. It was also debated which household the spirit would be going home to, seeing that the departed had a choice of three households. Thinking back, it must have been truly frightening for a young child then at the prospect of seeing a ghost. But my mother would say, silly girl, it’s your own father, do you think any harm would come to you?

My mother continued her desire to contact the spirit of my father via mediums. She would try to “talk” to my father, or to get instructions from him, through these mediums. If the spirit insinuated that something was lacking in the afterlife, she would burn incense and other things to make amends. It was perhaps her way of coping with her grief during those difficult early days. I would normally not be a party to such excursions to the mediums, except on one occasion, when we were visiting Ipoh and we had nowhere to go, except to wait in the car for my mother. These visits to the mediums soon stopped altogether – the Chinese believed that only fresh newly-departed spirits would talk to those remaining in this world. I do not know the rationale – it could be the belief of reincarnation, or the thinking that the spirits too had their own lives to lead in the other world.

Those early days were indeed painful for my mother. To ease her pain, which we did not fully understand then but could intuitively sense, we tried to behave ourselves and kept quiet most of the time. I did not know then, but my father’s finances were not exactly in order - and our very survival would have been my mother’s immediate worry.

Later, my mother told us that it was the second wife, with whom she had had no prior contact before the funeral, who had come to our rescue - not the first wife, who had turned strangely cold and distant. The second wife had offered financial assistance straight away without any conditions and this helped us tide over those early days.

Over the subsequent years, we had come to grow close to this magnanimous lady - my father’s second wife - whom we called Yee Ma. We visited each other’s houses often and shared many memories together.

But that would be another story for another time.