The boy in Melawati

The boy is five years old but looks like he is three. Almost like memory and imagination have stunted the impression. His grandmother is gone and I am the one who has to tell him.

Maybe he has had some kind of inkling that it has happened. From the general malaise and grief that has been around him and in the air. I think he knows something is wrong but isn't quite sure what or how bad it is.

A couple of days ago, the thought popped into my head that I have to tell him. That I would have to be one to tell him. To hold him in this moment of shock and pain and mourning. To deliver the terrible news that one of his most favourite people in the world has passed.

I also knew in that moment that I would have to probably tell and hold the older ones too. But it would have to start with him, it always starts with him. The child who sits at the beginning of all things, the start of memory and the origin of all that is imagined.

And so I tell him: "Sayang, grandma has passed away"

He starts crying and looks at me in betrayal. Which turns into disbelief. The stages of grief start making their way onto his face. He starts shaking his head claiming that she is just in the other room. He says I am not telling the truth. He says that I am lying. He says that it's not possible.

I try to reach out for him but he runs away screaming for her. The empty house starts echoing with him calling for his Grandma. He starts on the ground floor hoping to find her in a room playing with her iPad or doing a diamond painting. He looks in all the corners, the constant cry for Grandma coming out of his throat. It is guttural and disturbs the silence, as realisation makes its awful journey into his being.

He runs into the kitchen hoping she is there making him nethili sambal or rasam or chicken curry. The kitchen is empty, the fragrant smells of the way she showed her love no longer present. It hasn't been for months as the cancer took away everything that she was.

He dodges me, running up the stairs screaming his lungs out. "Grandma! GRANDMA! GRANDMAAAAAAA!"

The silence is filled with his gasps and his prayers that it isn't true. The upstairs is as empty as downstairs. No one is home. His Grandma is gone.

Eventually he makes it to her room. Here the smell of her existence is warped into the built in cupboards, the tiles of the floor and the dresser that he would often find her in front of combing her long hair. He sees himself in the mirror and realises finally that for the first time in his life, he will never see his Grandma again.

This was not like the time he followed his parents to the UK while his Appa did his Masters. Nothing like when he would drive with Grandpa and drop her off for her night shifts as a nurse. Nothing like the time they moved to their own place in Kajang. Nothing like all the trips he took where he would hug her, say goodbye and promise to see her again once he returns.

There is no return. Not for him. Not for her.

Tears stream down his face, painful and awful. I approach him slowly, also crying. I tell him I am sorry. I tell him she loved us. I tell him I am sorry. I hold him tightly. A 33 year old and a three year old hugging on to one another for dear life. Attempting to comfort through a pain and grief we don't how to make it through.

Finally we spy a photo we didn't know was hidden among her make up things on the dresser. A photo framed in plastic kept among her other precious items. A photo of him and her.

I hug my Inner Child as we both look at the photo of us with Grandma. Fresh tears wave its way down our throats and faces. My body heaves with sadness, my cries are loud and audible.

A tomorrow will come where the grief will be renewed and transformed and exchanged. But today, all I have to do is hold him and cry.