When a Flower Dies

by Josephine Chia

  The layer of dense ash hovering over the island seals in the heat. It is hot and muggy, making Pansy feel like she’s suffocating under a damp blanket.

  Pansy’s heart is weighed down by the callousness of people who destroy huge tracts of rain forest for a few pieces of gold. Trees take in carbon from the atmosphere. The loss of trees is a loss that affects each and every one of us. When we breathe in, we breathe in the trees’ outbreath and when we breathe out, the trees breathe in our outbreath. It’s a natural rhythm of giving and taking to sustain the intricate balance of life. Without this mutual exchange and without the wealth of plants and trees that surround us, our health will be the poorer, our chi weakened, our connection to the essential part of us diminished or severed. As Wordsworth said, We are out of tune.

  There is something that has gone subtly askew in the world. There are too many incidents for them to be coincidental: tsunamis, landslides and earthquakes beside the manmade ones like civil conflicts and wars. Pansy is very upset by the loss of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, now into its sixtieth day, and the sinking of Sewol, the South Korean ferry. Hundreds of passengers are still missing, others drowned and hundreds more unaccounted for, lodged in their watery graves. The fact that there are so many schoolchildren on board made the sinking of the ferry a double tragedy. Their families wait in anguish and diminishing hope as the days of search and recovery stretch on. Pansy knows what it’s like to wait for the return of a loved one lost at sea. Her heart reaches out to the families who are eager for news, yet filled with the harrowing possibility of having to identify a bloated body of their loved one, perhaps with eye sockets empty or parts of their anatomy eaten away. The thought of her father being fodder for sea creatures had tortured her then, fired nightmares, and had been unbearable; this disaster brings back the agony of that memory. No matter how much we believe that a person’s real essence lives on, the death and destruction of the physical self of the one we love is still painful. Despite her belief in the afterlife and reincarnation, she wouldn’t have had the strength and conviction to do what Chuang Tzu had done, drumming at his wife’s wake to show his joy that she was liberated from this mortal coil.

  From her compact studio apartment, Pansy senses a change in the atmosphere. The air feels turgid and oppressive as it reaches its apex, then explodes. Lightning flashes across the sky, so bright and swift that she thinks it is going to enter her room. Eight seconds later, the rumbles catch up with the flash. The sky opens, lets fall a curtain of water that sweeps away the seam of ash. The air is revitalised and cooled. Pansy loves the sound of the rain; she imagines how the thirsty earth must be drinking it all in, dry roots sucking from the runnels of water that are seeping underground. She recalls how the raindrops used to tap rhythmically on their attap rooftop, the gentle drumming connecting her to the source. She remembers how George would cuddle her whilst sitting in her mother’s living room in their house on stilts by the sea as they looked out to the expansive seascape and horizon, watching as the lightning ripped apart the dark brooding sky.

  Kim Guek had offered George a refuge and invited him to live with them when he and Pansy married, not long after the Queen’s coronation.

  “I am indebted to you forever, Mak,” George had said with total humility. “And to Pansy. You’re accepting me without a penny to my name. I’m deeply honoured to have a mother-in-law and wife who will support me through university and provide me a home. As soon as I graduate, I will pay you back a million fold. I will take care of you both till I die.”

  “It’s good to have a man back in the house again lah. Hock Chye would have blessed your marriage. We married for love, you know, Hock Chye and I. Not done in my time. I was supposed to marry a rich man’s son. When the family came to our house in Jonker Street to propose the match, I peeped through the hole in the floorboards of our Peranakan townhouse and didn’t like his arrogant look and haughty manners. In the kitchen, I accidentally bumped into the man’s valet and fell in love with him instead. You can imagine the uproar it produced. So I too was disowned and we fled to Singapore. But we never regretted our decision. That’s why I understand yours. Without money, life can be a hardship, but without love, life is a hardship. I wouldn’t have given up Hock Chye’s love for all my parents’ wealth in Malacca.”

  It was the first time that Pansy had heard her mother talk about her past.

  “How come you never told me before, Mak…”

  “There was no need. What is done is done. But now that you two have made the same decision, you should know. In some ways, you’ll find it an uphill struggle, but you’ll also know the joy that others can only imagine. It requires courage to give up everything for true love. Your whole world turns upside down. And yet, you know the love you share is beyond the average person’s understanding, and it helps you to withstand all the storms. You’re my son now, George,” Kim Guek said. “We are family. Families do things for love lah, not in anticipation of rewards, or to make someone feel obliged. True love should be unconditional.”

  “Remember what William Blake said about possessive love, George?” Pansy reminded him, then quoted,

  “Love seeketh only Self to please,

  To bind another to its delight,

  Joys in another’s loss of ease,

  And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

  “I’ve lost one family and gained another,” George said, with a catch in his voice.

  Pansy had written to Sister Catherine with the happy news. To their joy, they received an airmail envelope from England, this time with a stamp of the new queen. In it was a pretty, homemade wedding card from Sister Catherine. Pressed onto the front of the card were dried pansies, pink, yellow and blue, with their dark happy faces, plucked from the convent’s garden. For someone in her sixties, her calligraphy was still strong and beautiful. Sister Catherine had scripted the Corinthians’ message on love:

  Love is patient, love is kind.

  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

  It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking,

  it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

  It always protects, always trusts,

  always hopes, always perseveres.

  “It’s a holiday so we’re free. Why don’t you come and meet us for dinner?” Anthony says on the telephone. “I can’t come and pick you up as the car is already full. Just take a taxi and meet us at VivoCity. The kids want to have burgers. Come to Level Two. There’s a restaurant there which makes homemade burgers. It’s called Flintstones and it overlooks the bay.”

  How does one get homemade burgers when one is not at home?

  “Thank you. It will be good to see you and the family,” Pansy says.

  She would have liked to abstain from meat today of all days as it’s Vesak Day, but she doesn’t say anything. Maybe she’ll just have a corn-on-the-cob and some salad. She mustn’t complain, the opportunity to see her family is too precious. The gesture has made her spirits lift. Someone has set aside some time to see her. For the elderly, a shared slot of time is a gift. It does not cost anything to the giver, but is invaluable to the receiver.

  Pansy decides to take the bus, to familiarise herself with the new layouts and roads of Singapore via its routes. She has returned to a country that is not even remotely like the one she had left. The air-conditioning vents are blasting cold air into the bus. Some people hastily put on their cardigans and hooded tops. Others wrap shawls around themselves. This extreme change of temperature, from the outside heat and humidity to this severe chill happens in cinemas, malls and office buildings. This unsettles the body’s system and ripens it for colds and fevers.

  Pansy remembers a time when buses did not have air-conditioning and were trolley buses, with overhead cables joining a network of other cables in the air, with a bus conductor to clip and hand out tickets after one had handed over the cash. Ex
cept when it was raining, the windows were always open to the dust, fumes and myriad smells, scents and sounds of the city. George and herself had taken two buses each day to get to the hospital at Outram Road—he, a medical student and she, a student nurse in her starched, white cap and uniform, with one blue pip on her shoulders which became three before she graduated, then after graduation, a solid blue band.

  Fortunately, George’s English professor had put George on a scholarship, which helped their finances. Pansy and George had each carried a two-tier enamel tingkat of food that Kim Guek had prepared before dawn for their lunch each day to save money. One tier of the tiffin carrier would contain boiled rice and vegetables or fish, another a curry or asam pedas which varied each day. If their schedules permitted, they would meet at lunchtime and sit on a straw mat on the lawn, under the wide shade of the angsana tree, in the hospital grounds, to eat together. The food would be cold by that time, but still delicious. Small inconveniences did not matter, because they were so happy. The bus ride to VivoCity brings back to Pansy that warm feeling of how they had been, so young and so in love, united in a fight for their right for a life together.

  As the bus trundles along, different passengers embark and disembark. There is no conductor now so people tap their card on the machine at the front door. When she was young, Pansy would never ever see an ang moh on the bus. So she is mildly surprised to see the number that ride on buses now, office-workers in crisp white long-sleeved shirts carrying their computer cases, well-dressed women in their high heels obviously bound for work, women carrying infants or shepherding small children to the international schools and Montessori playschools along East Coast and Tanjong Katong Roads. Pansy is more surprised when a white, young man steps into the bus with a baby in a stroller and another child in school uniform. He is undoubtedly the trailing spouse whilst his wife works in a major corporation in the city. Times have indeed changed.

  Pansy is sat next to a Chinese man who appears to be in his eighties, eyes filmed over with cataract. She smiles at him and says in Teochew, “Going somewhere nice?”

  “Don’t know leh…”

  For a moment Pansy worries that the man might have dementia.

  “Doesn’t matter what,” the old man continues. “Wherever the bus go, go lor. Got hawker centre or shopping mall, I get out and walk-walk. Look-look, then have something to eat, then go back ah. Nothing to do at home what. Better than sitting at home all day and night, watching Korean drama. At least I can still walk…”

  The futility of his situation is registered in his voice.

  “I not so bad ah. Some people, younger than me ah, have leg pain lah, back pain, chest pain. Cannot walk without tongkat. You know ah, so many old people do what I do, to escape boredom. Lucky chenghu now have some activities for old people. But not everybody can go at same time. So how to pass time? So, take bus lah. Go round and round. Lucky so cheap for old people. Only 97 cents to go from north to south. You know or not? Terminal 3 is top favourite leh! So quiet. There you can walk-walk in air-con and see all the nice shops. Can pretend you going to catch aeroplane to ang moh country. Or pretend you going to greet someone who is coming home to you…”

  Pansy senses his profound loneliness and sees the imminent danger of the same fate befalling her as a senior citizen without a spouse. Or in the new parlance, someone who is from the Pioneer Generation, born before 1950. She is an addition to the greying population, latterly, very much in the news. No country has given such a high profile to their old people as this. It’s as if they are an undetected sub-species that has suddenly emerged from the woodwork, a flotsam of people who have all the time on their hands. Some of them haven’t got the money or energy for more robust activities, are seemingly of little use to society now, but have now been rewarded for their past contributions with the Pioneer Generation Package which consists of a small annual Medisave top-up, free usage of facilities at the centres for seniors and subsidised medical treatment for the over-eighties.

  “What about you? Going where ah?”

  “Oh, I’m meeting my son and his family at VivoCity for dinner…”

  “Aiyah! You so lucky! My children, grandchildren. They very, very busy. Work so hard, pay for this, pay for that. Everything cost so much. Holiday ah, nowadays cost $10,000 per person, you know. Chamsee-uh! I had kway chap stall. My time ah, $10,000 will take a few years to earn. People spend so much, so have to work so hard lah. Where got sense one? So don’t have time to visit old folks lah. Sometimes I don’t see anyone for a whole month. So must make own effort lor. Get out of the house. At least can see people, even if people don’t talk to you. Otherwise, stay at home and talk to four walls. What for?”

  “Oh, yes, when I started work as a nurse, I earned less than $100 a month! Young people nowadays would be shocked to hear this,” says Pansy. “How many children do you have?”

  “Seven,” the old man says, His cheeks crinkling as he smiles, proud to prove his prowess. “Old days people have more children hor? Nowadays chenghu have to persuade young couples to have even one! But maybe young people are cleverer. Might as well enjoy their lives. Why have children? Look at mine. So ungrateful. Before ah, I have to work so hard. Morning to night, my stall was open. So my children can have better life. Now they are doctors, lawyers and accountants. Now I think they ashamed to have me around, talk so rough, act so rough, like swah koo, a mountain tortoise…”

  “And your wife…?”

  “She changed body already,” he says using the Teochew metaphor for death.

  The man has perked up, losing his grave look. Someone is listening to him.

  “I think I come with you to VivoCity lah!” The old man says after a while, and for one horrible moment, Pansy has a vision of herself walking into Flintstones with a stranger trailing, causing Emily to throw an almighty fit. “...I can take the train into Sentosa with my EZ-Link card and get nice view of island. Maybe after, go to Malaysian Food Street at Lesort World for some Penang lo bak. So use up many hours hor?”

  For lonely people, each day is an enemy of hours. The chasm of time needs to be broken down into manageable units of activity so that the hours can be spent. In one’s youth, there is never enough time but in old age, there is too much, so much that one can sink into its pool of depression. Pansy is ashamed of her ungracious thought about the man gate-crashing Emily’s dinner party. In her shame, she allows the old man to talk and talk, interjecting every now and then just to assure him that she is listening. She gets a litany of his aches and pains, his children’s preoccupation with themselves and their families, his dead wife, his life that was.

  We cling to the past, as if it’s a life raft because we fear drowning without a future.

  The old man’s loneliness penetrates Pansy and she wishes she could escape. In desperation, she looks out the window and to her amazement, the roadside trees are displaying beautiful flowers. The oppressive heat had been followed by a few days of heavy downpour and that must have awakened the trees, resulting in a mock spring.

  Pansy is delighted. Furry clusters of gold decorate the tops of the Golden Penda trees. Besides these are other trees which have pendulous, bright yellow grape like blooms, similar to the ones that are in England except that here, they are called, Indian Laburnum or Golden Showers. To Pansy the tree is both beauty and the beast. Though beautiful, like its English sister, the laburnum can be used for healing skin and other problems; yet, it is poisonous. Excessive consumption can be lethal, resulting in vomiting, convulsive movements, and coma. Nonetheless, they are cheerful trees, which soften the impact of the imposing tower blocks. The winds blow and clusters of the beautiful yellow petals are loosened and they flutter gracefully down towards the pavement in a golden shower.

  This is one of the best things that Lee Kuan Yew had done. He had wrested the country from the colonial government, merged with Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak to create the new nation of Malaysia. In 1965, when Singapore was booted out of the union, Lee Kuan Yew suddenl
y found he was responsible for creating jobs, housing and an economy for almost two million people. He gave tax holidays to foreign investors and manufacturing companies sprouted. But even as his government built more and taller buildings, he endeavoured to protect the environment so that nature was not completely destroyed. He came up with a Garden City concept, so that any urban planning must include green landscaping, to soften the harsh presence of concrete. The Parks and Recreation Department, which eventually evolved into the National Parks, was set up to study, design and incorporate his grand plan. Today, the island is promoted as a ‘City in a Garden’. Whatever the semantics, the idea was brave and daring. It is Lee Kuan Yew’s wonderful legacy to Singapore. Not all his legacies are as well lauded.

  Now that her attention has switched to flowers and trees, the severity of the tower blocks recede in attention, Pansy can appreciate the beauty in and around Singapore. Red flame of the forest flowers, white frangipani, yellow allamanda, and pink Princess of India blooms brighten up the view. Bushes shout their profusion of natural colours—red, bright orange, royal purple, deep blue, bringing a cheer to the heart. How interesting that a shift in focus can result in a change in attitude. Pansy feels less oppressed.

  She is going up the escalator at VivoCity with the old man.

  “Okay, I’m getting off at this level. Enjoy the train ride. Walk properly. Kia hor-hor,” she ends up saying, in the usual Teochew parting.

  “Aiyoh! Very crowded ah? My time, we thought one million people was a lot. But look at this! Like so many rats in a small cage! Everybody also walk so fast like have no time, like rats running round and round in cage. Aiyah! That’s modern life. Okay, okay, you walk good-good too.”