By Ryan Khaw
The only certainty in this world is change. For many, change is a difficult thing to accept, but only because it comes suddenly upon them. Slowly adapting to life is the key to moving on. I remember when there were constants in my life I was scared to lose, but growing up meant slowly accepting that nothing was forever.
For a significant portion of my life there was always one constant. Every January or February, my family would visit my paternal grandmother (We referred to her as “Ah Ma”). Extended family that reached as far as Singapore would visit for one or two days and cousins from Johor would make themselves home in Ah Ma’s place for three days. The festivities were the rare time the family was all together. Before teenage-hood me and three of my first cousins removed would retreat to one of the bedrooms away from the noise of the adults gambling and entertain ourselves with a myriad of card games I cannot recall. When the older cousins brought out the illegal fireworks and firecrackers we would rush out to watch them light it; we would again run back to the room because we hated the loud noise. Afterwards we would play with snappers (or “pop-pops” as we would call it) and sparklers, repeat the whole process three for three days, and go back to regular life until the next year to do it all over again.
As time passed on, us first-cousins-removed came more distant, and Ah Ma’s health was deteriorating. She didn’t stand up much as the older she got it was increasingly more painful to walk, coupled with eating an excess amount of sugary diet she developed diabetes, She had surgery to remove her right kidney due to diabetes.
The inevitable occurred on October of 2022: Ah Ma had passed and since then we haven’t had a full family reunion.
“People of your generation don’t have a family monarch or leader," said Huang Ju Lee. Ah Ma was the centre of the family, and with her not around, each part of the family celebrates Lunar New Year by their own and the Lunar New Year I knew was gone.
If you told this to 8 year old me, I would probably fall to my knees crying that reunions were over, but as I grow older I saw the writing on the wall and instead of constantly denying the inevitable and suspending myself in ignorance, I slowly came to accept what I feared. Pushing off your fears will only lead to more pain when I come around and you have left yourself unprepared for it.
As a child, having certainties are important, but part of growing is knowing that nothing in this world is certain, and growing for me was knowing Lunar New Year was going to end, and that I needed to accept change instead of run from it.
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