I dreamt that I was sitting in front of my computer blogging away about how much I missed my grandparents and I fell asleep half way and started dreaming.
You could say that I was dreaming in a dream.
In my dream’s dream, all my family members were bustling about, acting very busy, it’s almost as if we were preparing for something. Anticipating something.
There was a bus. With very narrow exits and SIX bus conductors. I had some close friends and some family on the bus with me and we were to get out at the stop just below an overhead bridge. I let my family and friends get out first because I was the fattest and biggest among them. Everyone could fit out the complex exits(sort of like a tunnel to get out from) but I could not and was taking my time trying to go about it.
The impatient bus driver(not dissimiliar to the Metro bus drivers) took off and I thought, “Nevermindla.. still got another stop in front,”.
He stopped at the next stop and once again I could not fit out the exit. I was getting angry. He did not wait for me to get out and moved on.
This time I was sceaming at the bus and his six bus conductors, “BAGI SAYA TURUNLAH!! KENAPA TAK BAGI SAYA TURUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
They eventually stopped at the side of the road and I got off. As the bus was driving off, one of the bus conductor called out to me. He waved a goodbye at me and I waved one back.
We were supposed to go to the Maxis headquarters to arrange something. Like I said, we were anticipating something. I went into the maxis headquarters and tried contacting my family with my handphone. To my utter horror, there was NO signal. I thought, “How can it be so ironic? I’m at the headquarters and there is no line from Maxis? Wtf?”
My Aunty saw me and she ushered me upstairs.
Suddenly the upstairs of the maxis headquarters became the downstairs of my new house(here in Kedah). But it had more doors and more windows and the outside of the house looked like the outside of my house in Subang. There was some sort of festival going on outside and fireworks lit up the night sky. They weren’t noisy at all and the sparks were moving very very slowly. Like sparkly bubbles floating up into the sky.
My grandmother was sitting among us and I did not feel that it was weird because I knew she was coming back from where she went to to be with us for just this one time. In my dream, my grandfather was still alive.(though in real life it is not possible because my grandfather died 5 days BEFORE my grandmother).
We were rushing out for an open house and I went up to my room(it is my room in Subang Jaya, but with the size of Li Shen’s room here in Kedah) and started to try on clothes in the dark. I could not see what I was wearing but at intervals a mirror would suddenly appear in front of me and I’d be horrified at my horrendous dressing style and throw everything off. It was nearly 10pm before I was satisfied and the strangest part of my dream was that my father did not scold me for taking so long.
The open house was not an open house but a cinema theater. My grandmother came back from the dead to be with us to watch a movie.
She sat in the row behind mine and she looked normal. Whereelse, my “still alive” grandfather looked very disoriented and very old. I was burdened by this tremendous guilt for not visiting him enough after the demise of my grandmother. I hugged my grandmother and asked her if she remembered that the last time we watched a movie together was when we watched Sweet Home Alabama on a hot afternoon during my form4 year?
She said yes and we both hugged each other and cried. Then I grabbed the side of her head and stared into her eyes. I really wanted to look at those eyes before I did not have the chance to ever see them again. See, my grandmother had cataract. Hence, her eyes were a strange translucent grey/brown sort of shade and if you take it the wrong way, it can look scary. But to me they were just my grandmothers’ special eyes and I stared at it wanting to photograph her eyes in my head. I told her to let me look into her eyes before she was gone.
The following day, we had a grand reception at one of our houses. Everybody who attended the actual funeral were there but the atmosphere was more cheerful than sombre. My grandfather was moving around the crowd, minding his own business. It was almost like he was not interacting with the people around him. But in my dream he has not died.
 And he was standing straght(in real life he had tuberculosis of the back and spent the last 30 years of his life as a hunchback)..just like how an aunty said she saw him in her dream the day after he died.(In her dream, he had uncombed hair and was holding a suitcase in a dark empty place. He was looking around with a worried look on his face. This dream occured after the death of my grandfather and during the 5 days that my grandmother was in a coma before she was taken off the ventilation system).
In my dream, I was still overwhelmed with the guilt of not visiting more when I should have. After the entire party was over, all my distant relative left and my grandmother and grandfather got into a van. There were some officers of sorts in the van to take them away with them. We waved our goodbyes to them and saw their van turned a corner at the end of the street and disappeared out of sight.
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I woke up from my dream feeling very sad. Why did I have to look at my grandmothers’ grey brown eyes so intently? Why did she come back only to see a movie with us? I thought about how she was at ease when she came back for the movie in my dream.
Immediately, the guilt about not visiting my grandfather came back to me. I wondered if I had the time to visit him this weekend…before I remembered that he had passed away too.
After awhile I was crying like a mad fuck like that.. crying my eyes out just short of wailing. Luckily Lie Yuen could not hear me from the next room.
Apparently my brother gets his moods too. Just last week he bought a packet of horse peas when he was out with my parents and he suddenly started crying and my parents asked him why, “I remember Yeah Yeah used to make horse peas for us to eat..”.. then my father felt so touched. My father seldom gets affected when my brother gets emotional. He usually scolds some sense into my brother to stop acting so emotional. But this is a different reason leh.
Every now and then, I want to go back to their house in USJ3. Where there would be fruits and snacks served every other hour, the floor tediously cleaned for me to lie down on and you know, just somewhere to call home. Where the occupants there doted on you no matter how old you are.
It’s been half a year liao.