It's Grandpa's 1 year death anniversary today.
Great People Don't Die, They Live On In Our Memories.. Forever.
In Loving Memory of Yap Chwee Hock
1926 - 2007
There was a stark feeling of melancholy inside the room. His lifeless body laid motionless on his deathbed as I looked on intently for some form of physical response. But the austere truth was inevitable - he had passed away peacefully just minutes before I arrived. An unbridled surge of emotions overwhelmed me as the first evidence of tears started to wallow uncontrollably in my eyes. Funeral proceedings quickly beckoned following peremptory examinations by the doctor, and the solemnities were to be held on the house's very field that we grew up playing catching and football on.
They say that a funeral is the mourning of the death of a man, I choose to think of it as the celebration of a lifetime. The 5-day funeral that spanned from the 13th to the 17th of June celebrated and marked the end of the lifetime of a distinguished man, a man who lived 81 multi-faceted years, a man who once referred to me affectionately as "di yi", a man whom I call, with pride and amore, my grandfather.
An industrious and enterprising young man unfazed by the hurdles of life, my grandfather carved out a living during the Japanese Occupation by peddling the streets of Katong selling "Yeow Tiao". But the man, blessed with a keen sense of business acumen, wasn't born for a life of mediocrity and small beer. He was destined for a life of accomplishment, and his big break came in 1955 when he established YCH Transport, then a small, humble local passanger transportation business of which he was the sole proprietor for the next 18 years. In 1973, the firm was converted to a private limited enterprise and was renamed YCH Transport Pte Ltd. That laid the foundation for his firm's transformation into an end-to-end supply chain management solutions partner to world-class companies throughout Asia Pacific. Today, it is knowned as YCH Global Logistics Pte Ltd and helmed by two of my uncles and my mom.
Entrepreneurship aside, he was committed to philanthrophy and espoused the notion of giving back to society what it had given to him. Preceeding the NKF scandal, he was a regular fixture on the annual list of NKF donors, and I vaguely remember a hefty sum of 500K being donated in one particular year during my primary school years. I guess NKF had always been, for decades, his charitable organisation of choice in retrospect of the agonising loss of his third daughter, of whom I have never seen before, to kidney failure more than 20 years ago. With the NKF being the erstwhile default charitable organisation following the scandal, the Yap family, notwithstanding, has carried on his generosity by committing all donations contributed by visitors at his funeral to the National Cancer Foundation, a sum worth, from what I last heard, approximately 30 grand.
During his lifetime, he was always a vivaciously jovial man and his court-jester antics never failed to crack us up. Even when his health teetered at the precipice of perilousness, he was still constantly a bundle of joy. His good-naturedness and honesty had won him more friends than foes, as evinced by his immense popularity among fellow Chinese Swimming Club(CSC) members during his active years. As an avid table-tennis and billiard player, as well as a Karaoke aficionado, he spent much of his senescent years honing his vocal skills at the lounge in CSC and at home. Not one to shy away from showcasing his talents, he always performed impromptu in public, to the delight of everyone present. Speaking of CSC, I will always remember the times he and my grandmother used to take me and my cousins to the club where we would spend the entire night in arcade games room while he would go to the karaoke lounge and billiard rooms to do his thing. Thereafter, he would always take us for supper at Xin Hai Shan located along Katong. What was schmaltziest, though, was the songs he repeatedly played on his car stereo and sang to everytime we sat in his car. The tunes of "Xin Tai Ruan", "Rong Shu Xia", "Ai Pia Jia Eh Yia" and "Ba Wo De Ai Qing Huan Gei Wo", inter alia, still reverberate in my head hithertho, and they poignantly remind me of the endearing grandfather that we all once physically had.
In 200, my grandfather was diagnosed with terminal illness, and within the next few years, the deterioration was swift, too swift. In 2005, he lost independence in mobility and was bounded to his custom-made electronic wheelchair ever since. No sooner, he sank into a state of perpetual hebetude and started losing the ability to do routine stuff like feeding himself, engaging in simple conversation et all, and had to be taken care of by my grandmother as well as a full-time nurse, auguring the worst to come. I always wondered, nonetheless, whether it was more mental rather than physical. It seemed to me that in recent years, he had lost the will to fight his ailment, to which he eventually succumbed. My grandmother has always occured to me as a figure of strength, and credits to her, she had been indefatigable while taking care of my grandfather during his twilight years. It was hence particularly heart-rending when, for the first time in my life, I saw her cry, nevermind with such pangs that one can only witness it for oneself to fully comprehend.
Whatever the vicissitudes of life, my grandfather had taken them all in his stride. In that light, he was truly remarkable. Illustrious personalities like Minister for Education Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Minister of the Prime Minister's Office Lim Boon Heng personally coming down to pay respects as well as the overflowing number of wreathes which made passers-by wonder whether the Botanic garden had relocated to 246 Telok Kurau Road were testament to his prominence. But even the most remarkable of people are only human, and as all homo sapiens would have been, he was enervated by the ravages of illness and embarked on a journey to the great beyond, leaving behind a legacy of 9 children and 25 grandchildren. On the final day of the funeral, which happened to be my birthday, my father's birthday and father's day, we made the final walk on foot to the chartered buses that would take us to Mundai crematorium for the cremation of his remains, the rite of passage to his afterlife. It turned out to be one of the most devastating scenes in my life when unbridled torrents of tears started flowing from everyone's faces as they muttered their final words while his coffin was being pushed into the incinerator.
Time is a wound healer, they say, and the pain of losing our grandfather would probably diminish with time as we move on with our respective lives, but while he may have left us in body, in spirit he will always linger. He built and left behind a beautiful family, a legacy, that will always remember him as the man we all looked up to as the personification of success, humility and impeccable character. So as I reminesce about the wonderful times I had with him during his lifetime, I embrace with pride and gratefulness my association-by-blood with the best grandfather I could ever possibly have had.
Dear grandpa, you may be physically gone forever, but you will continue to live on in our hearts and memories for all eternity. We love you.
Video courtesy of Charlyn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anmObQM4Ofg