7 Years Ago Today

On Apr 16th, 2018, 7 years ago today, the world lost the incredible woman who is the reason for the 珍[1] tattoo on my left arm. I wrote the post below then, and reposting now in her memory:
Two weeks ago, I lost my godmother. I was there in the room for her last moments.
Some people grieve in silence. But all I have are words. Honestly, I can’t shut up. I don’t understand how everything has gone on spinning. I want the world to stop and grieve with me. I want the world to know that it has suffered a deep loss, that it has a hole in its fabric, that it has an unending emptiness. I want the world to close its eyes and see what I see every night since: see again and again the despair of watching her blood pressure numbers fall, the dark helplessness of watching her spikes collapse into a flat line. I want the world to know what it’s like to be crumpled on the cold hospital floor, begging her not to go while your heart breaks into a hundred shards. Don’t leave us, don’t leave us, don’t leave me. But all I have are words.
My beautiful, strong, wonderful mother told me - “I am selfish, I cry because I miss her.” I am grieving, and I don’t know when I will stop grieving. But that grief is selfish. I am writing now not because I want sympathy; I am writing because I hope that you read this and you understand that wonderful people like Aunty Pat exist, that you are loved, and that you have capacity to change the worlds of many the way Aunty Pat has.
Aunty Pat is not my biological aunt. I say she is my godmother but even then I’m not really sure if she is; she just sort of happened. Aunty Pat is the kind of person that will find a way to slide into your life; blink, and she will suddenly be there. That was one sunny afternoon at Grace Baptist church, when my 20-something year old father introduced Patricia Sum to his then-girlfriend (later, my mother). A blink, and suddenly, they were best friends. That friendship blossomed into deep sisterhood - my mother has once referred to Aunty Pat as her soulmate.
Aunty Pat never married or had her own biological children, and so when her friends - including my parents - had kids, they became Pat’s kids. She has so many godchildren that I can’t speak for all of them, but my version of Aunty Pat was spending weekends at her house with some of the other kids; chatting around her dining table; singing worship songs in her living room; having sleepovers in her apartment. The seven or eight of us would cram into her car (a feat impossible now) while she took us out for movies and dinners. Even when we grew older, it was a common sight to see Aunty Pat suddenly appear at our sofas and dining tables.
To Aunty Pat, loving others is in the same vein as loving life. Generosity was never the Calvinist ritual of being poor to make others rich. No, Aunty Pat savoured every drop. On her 50th birthday, she celebrated it with a giant party at Capella in Sentosa and bought her friends and kids (including me) gowns and suits to dress up. When it was time to blow out the candles, in true Aunty Pat fashion, she invited her close girlfriends to come up and blow it out with her. A favourite story of my sister’s is how Aunty Pat brought her clubbing for the first time. The two of them, alongside my mother and Rachel, decided to go at 10pm (clearly the time when parties start), and unceremoniously decide it was too boring and leave the place 30 minutes later. Even her wake was decorated more like a wedding than a funeral, because Aunty Pat told my mother that “it must be a party” and “there must be balloons” (there were).
She loved even in times when it was difficult to love. It’s easy to stick around when things are going well, but it’s the people who are there when you are at your worst who really matter. When my family was going through hard times, Aunty Pat, suddenly, would appear and take care of us. When we were kids who thought we knew better when we didn’t - a terrible combination - she was there to admonish, advise, and unconditionally love even as we rejected her. At the end, her friend came up to me and said between sobs - “Tammie, I don’t know you, but Pat always prayed for you - she always worried for you.”
During her wake, friend after friend after family after family came up to share about how Aunty Pat has been there for them. How she has paid bills for those struggling financially; how she took friends on holidays during difficult times; how she has served charities clandestinely; how she never gave up on people - all without asking for anything in return.
One afternoon last week, I received a sudden message from my friend Esther. Esther runs a startup that makes Rabbit Rays, a toy to help children understand medical procedures to help them cope with scary treatments. Esther tells me that in January, her startup had received a generous donation to give Rabbit Rays to MINDS, a special needs school. Esther had tried to meet this anonymous donor multiple times, but was always refused. A few days ago, she learned that the donor had passed from cancer - the same day I posted about losing Aunty Pat. She wanted to know if they were the same person. I think of Aunty Pat in January, who had just received the diagnosis, and was just starting chemotherapy. Surely she was in too much pain to be donating to strangers.
I press for more details. Esther responds: “Sum Siok Chun?” Aunty Pat’s Chinese name. My heart bursts.
I could tell you a hundred more stories about the brilliant, fierce, beautiful woman Aunty Pat is, and it would not be enough. I don’t have a singular defining memory or symbol of Aunty Pat, because she has been there in every corner of my life, through the big and the small. The last thing Aunty Pat texted my childhood friend Tim was: “Dinner is ready, please come down.” This is the biggest expression of love to me - giving and caring in the everyday mundane. Anybody can give flashy donations and host fancy celebrations. Aunty Pat will throw a hell of a party and will also be there when nobody is looking.
The thing is, the inches add up. You may not know it, but the little things you do, the words of affirmation, the acts of kindness, they add up. Aunty Pat, all the enormous and tiny things you did, they have added up. We may not all match your extraordinariness, but we all have a chance to decide what kind of place we have in the lives of those around us, and I want to choose to love the way you did. You will be there in every joy, success, and love of my life, because you helped build it. I hope I make you proud.
All I have are words, but today they hold a thousand oceans. Thank you if you took the time to read this. I hope you know that just as people can be unreasonably terrible, there are others who are unreasonably good. I hope you know that you make a difference. I hope you know that you are loved. … Thank you to everyone who has ever extended a kind word or a kind deed to me. I am grateful, and it matters. I love you all.
So much has happened in the seven years since. The grief has settled into some sort of cosmic microwave background, knitted into the tapestry of all the losses that have defined me. Sometimes when it wells up and blurs my vision, I cling onto the pain as if it were the only evidence I have left that Aunty Pat existed. Proof that I loved her, and that I was loved by her. As if suffering was the only way to earn that badge.
The truth is, Aunty Pat’s joie de vivre is already part of my embeddings. She taught me how to give, and how to receive. Play was a large part of her life, and now I bring a little of that into mine. The pink sunsets. The yellow flowers. The smile on a friend’s face. Aunty Pat was a part of the machinery that enables me to, literally, stop and smell the roses.
Aunty Pat, I miss you. I love you. And I hope to keep making you proud.
My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger.
Chery Strayed, Dear Sugar

[1] 珍 is the last character of Aunty Pat’s Chinese name. It is also the Mandarin version of “Jane”, which Aunty Pat didn’t like - but she would chuckle at the poking-of-fun here. The character means “precious”, a reminder to myself to cherish the people around me while I still have them.
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