Solemn news

So, two days after my bizarre dream in my previous post (on death, accident and my deceased grandmother), I received very solemn news from my family over the phone.

My GrandAunt passed away on Friday morning.

This Grandaunt was the younger sister of my paternal grandfather who resided in Singapore.
She and her children (uncle and three aunts) all reside in that liberal and clean neighboring country of ours.

She was the only one we knew from grandpa's side and the only one possibly left to link us to our ancestry parentage.
To be frank, my cousins and me may not be really that familiar to her nor were we close to her.

The first time we visited her in Singapore was to attend her eldest son; our uncle's (my dad's cousin brother) wedding.
We were so young that time; I remembered I was only 8 I think, when I was there in Singapore.

Now my grandaunt was a really healthy old lady, and she always have on that smile which showed her nice white teeth flashed at us kids when she meets us.

She has come to Malaysia a few times too; and she always tried to talk to us kids whenever we sit on the couch to say hi.

Only thing is, what amused us (I am referring only to my cousins and me; our generation) is how we always could never understand her after the first few syllables in the sentence.

She has a very distinct and accented way of speaking that dialect of the family and though my cousins and I speak the same language, hers was definitely much more in the college or postgraduate level.

I was deeply shocked to hear about her demise, although it had been so long since we met her.
We rarely kept in touch even, and I guess that was really to blame on our part.
I guess we were not great in keeping in touch, and for that reason, I felt rotten.

I am not sure whether we attend the funeral in Singapore or not, but the adults have made the arrangements; so they will be representing the rest of us to attend the wake and funeral and pay the last respects to our late grandaunt (for daddy and uncle, she's their Aunt).

I guess what I can only do is to pray for her (even though she's a Taoist/Buddhist) and also to mourn/grieve by wearing dull color clothes for at least a week since I can't be there in person.

It made me feel like this is one thing I can do for a great ancestor who had lived and these are the last respects deserving of an ancestor.

Oh, did I mention she must be almost a 100 now? Or at least close to a 100; I know she's definitely over 90.

Rest in peace, Grandaunt...