first love, last rites

In death, I learnt more about my grandfather than when he was alive.

But first, a "What It Should Have Been" [known also as a WISHB to journos].

His "companion" -- as my very proper school teacher aunt discreetly informed me, when I asked her about the identity of that skinny auntie waiting with us for the body to arrive at the casket -- did not have a family with my grandfather, as I'd thought [that would be my grandfather's philandering younger brother, but more on him another day].

Instead, she left her presumably grown children to be with him after her husband died. While my grandfather left his wife and children for her.

They had, perhaps, less than 10 years together. Or perhaps they'd always been lovers, meeting in secret, regretting their choices but trying their best to keep their respective families intact.

There's no polite way of saying it: They'd shacked up together, but as two old folks well past their retirement age, it could hardly be for the red hot sex. So, in the immortal words of Roxette, it must have been love.

I expected her to look like a femme fatale, some floozy with a poodle perm and red lipstick smeared on her lips. But she looked like one of those tiny wrinkled aunties who regularly elbow me in their bid to be the first to board the bus whenever I try to get out from Chinatown.

As we shuffled round the coffin while the Buddhist priest chanted the last rites, I saw her hand reach out, as if in slow motion, and tenderly touch his face.

No one heard her silent sobs. And there was no one to comfort her. Because he was gone.