LOVE AND LIGHT WAS WHAT SHE SAID

....eulogy by son, Cheah Jie Juan

Life is a cycle like the world and learning from mistakes than to regret from them is what my mother once advised me. Moving towards the journey of life is what makes me reconcile, whenever I’m in pain, she was always there for me.

Firm but with grace, she tucks me into bed every night when I was young. She thought me how to love when I was 14 and I didn’t have the right set of mind to realize or to give in love like she did.

She inspired me to open up my mind and to feel free to speak my mind. My mother was like any other but with a superior guidance to help others to get through the hardships. And I knew she was a strong person in heart.

She guided me with her eyes which tell me about more than just right from wrong, but also about love without any vindication. She taught me everything. She taught me that immediate families are the most important and as a form of primary priority. I was naive to take it as a lesson, but she never gave up on me and she had faith by her side that I’ll be a better man as a young man myself today.

I still remember the time we had mother and son conversations which were most valued in my mind and heart than just a mere memory.

She had her heart opened up to listen and she advises me with rationalities in terms of what’s going on in my life, what are my hopes and dreams, just through out everything that every child wishes for. And I’m grateful to have given that chance to have a peaceful vowel exchange with my mother. So did my sister.

I will never know myself if I never gotten her as a mother. That’s wonderful.

The stories she told me about herself, my father, my sister and I were fascinating and I’ll never forget her words which will remain in my head forever. Whenever I’m confused about life, she was there to guide me like a light shining a path to the truth.

Love and light was what she said.

She may have left, be she is never gone. She’ll remain in our hearts and will guide us in our hearts whenever, wherever and whatever we are in this life.

THE GODSON REMEMBERS

...blog by Ahmad Saiful Ridzuan

It was really funny how it all started. She was my junior, my enemy and at the same time my most qualified adversary in school. Then high school ended. We started to become closer, past the enemy-adversary stage and became close friends. Met her mother and it all begun. I can remember the first time I met her mother, at a water filter shop that I was working at that time. Normal customer-shop keeper relation.

Time passed and a birthday party celebrating her in The Red Box, Low Yat Plaza. Conversations, laugh and stories made us closer, closer to her heart closer to her family. I still remember when we were in the elevator at the end of this celebration, this woman whom I now called “mummy” told us something like this:

 “Saiful, friends come and go but good friends are hard to find”. Yes it is true. Period. This is not a post about my dearest best friend Krystyn but for her mother whom I called mummy, my god mother.

I would write a book if I could and I would write a journal to eternalise her legacy. Humbly, my English is not that good and my vocabulary are limited; my England as mummy would say is a far cry from perfection. However, this will not stop me. England or any other language is not a language of love but merely a transaction medium of feelings.

“I am not here to replace your mother but I am here to complement her” that is what mummy is and that is what mummy did. She complimented the role of my own mother. Caring, loving me unconditionally, advised, scolded me, feed me, educated me and most of all took me in as a family.

Sigh… too many things to say, too many feelings to express if only words could permits and language could translate. Unfortunately it can’t. That warm feelings, that glow in my heart that love that I feel is not something that can be translated.

This transaction medium failed me, but does this means my love for mummy failed me? No. it just meant that something big, sacred, pure and unconditional sometimes are best to be unexpressed. After all, Jeannie Cheah Koo Yook Foong (Mummy) already knew.

Saiful Ridzuan (20th May, 2008)