Chinese New Year

I had a post sitting lonely in the drafts corner about how Chinese New Year was here again and how everything was red and loud all over again. I never finished that post (in fact, I just threw it out a couple seconds ago) but the gist of all that meandering around was simply to try leading in to the fact that I really miss my grandmother.

It felt weird, not going to that awful nursing home to visit her this year - my grandmother passed away last year.

I've always hated that nursing home because it reeks of sadness and hopelessness - you watch some old folks argue with the staff about how they want to go home and why won't their children come by to pick them up, they promised, and it breaks your heart. What only makes it worse is when you see the other old folks who simply sit in silence, having given up on "home", whatever it may be for them now.

In a way, you could say that my grandmother was one of the luckier ones - she had to stay in the nursing home because none of us could take her in, especially after she had a bad fall and became wheelchair-bound. It didn't help that she was always as stubborn as ever, always the matriarch of the household. Even though she had to stay in the nursing home, we visited her every week to chat, to bring her anything she wanted - small things like bread and those ginger sweets she liked, anything to make staying there a little easier.

I could go on about how both my grandmother and I watched each other - she saw me grow while I saw her age - but that's not the point of this post. We used to visit her every Chinese New Year, oranges and good food in tow - I guess it just felt odd not having oranges to bring to her this year, felt strange to not have her chastise me for stumbling over the usual greetings in Mandarin to wish her a good year and good health.

Chinese New Year has never really meant all that much to me - I don't have a lot of relatives to visit because of family feuding, and the ones I do visit I see often enough that there is nothing to say. No nosy aunties asking about school or boyfriends, no cousins to talk to. I suppose the thing I miss just a little bit more would be the sound of people playing Mahjong - my grandmother would play every year when she was younger.

I don't know where I was trying to go with this, but I guess I just wanted - needed - to put this out somewhere. I just really miss my grandmother. I agree with mum - it was better that she passed away when she did instead of staying on to suffer even more - but I just really miss her.

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