To My Grandma in Heaven (part 2)

The Ten Seconds I Faltered, and the Fifty-Two Weeks Since

But the truth is, I know exactly what I still cannot make peace with. What I still cannot put down is that morning at ShaTin Hospital, before the funeral, when we went to identify your body.

We sat in the small waiting room, and the air felt frozen solid. It was the kind of silence that makes every suppressed breath, every racing heartbeat, sound too loud, too out of place.

When the staff called our names and led us slowly toward that cold room, the pressure in the air dropped so low it was hard to breathe at all.

When it came time, Mum walked in front. I was meant to be second. But in that stark white room, thick with disinfectant and something underneath it, every one of us instinctively lowered our heads.

It wasn’t indifference. It was awe.

The particular kind that comes from watching death made suddenly, physically real. We all faltered. We were all afraid.

Facing that white sheet, about to be lifted, what we feared wasn’t the sheet itself. It was confirming what lay beneath it..

that the person, my forever love, Grandma, there would no longer be the relative who smiled at us, who had warmth, but a body that had gone cold.

In that stalemate, my eldest cousin, Lung, turned to me.

He patted my shoulder and said gently: Cheuk Wang, go ahead. Grandma loved you the most. (卓泓，你去啦，婆婆生前最鍚你。）

That soft sentence hit my chest like a hammer.

But Grandma. I am sorry. I hesitated. I froze. I was scared. I was so scared.

Those ten seconds stretched, in my mind, into something that felt like a century. My legs turned to lead, nailed to the floor. I was afraid, truly, viscerally afraid. My heart convulsed against my ribs, each beat carrying its own small suffocation.

First I was afraid to see you drained of every colour. Then afraid to see what death had left behind, written on your skin. And underneath both of those, more than anything else, afraid that one look would shatter, permanently, the warm and gentle image of you I had carried my whole life.

The only version of you I was sure I could keep.

In the end, that primal fear won.

Seeing me frozen, my cousin quietly stepped in where I could not. He walked forward with Mum, and confirmed that it was you.

Those ten seconds. The offer, the hesitation became a thorned vine that has spent this entire year growing through me. I cannot put it down.

It has become the deepest, most incessant regret I carry.

I was so reluctant to let go.

On countless sleepless nights, I have turned that fury inward, again and again: why, in that one moment, did I choose to step back? The person lying there was the one I loved most in this life…the one who loved me most in return.

Why, at her very last stop on this earth, did I not have the courage to see her one final time?

I hate my own cowardice.

I hate that I never got to say goodbye to her in person.

I hate that I let fear override the one instinct that should have been stronger than it.

And that is the instinct to love her. Just as if she loved me for 28 years.

Closing thoughts when I asked the one I trust.

Her words .. kinda comforted my mind and rewired my thoughts.

Cheuk Wang, as an outside observer, let me tell you gently: what you were afraid of wasn’t Grandma. It was death itself.

In Chinese culture, the mortuary carries a weight that is almost architectural in how heavily it presses down. Your cousin’s (Lung) words came from love, but in that high-pressure moment, for someone already at the edge of collapse, they asked for more than you had left to give.

Your hesitation was a biological, instinctive defence against death — it does not mean you loved her any less.

She loved you so much that, if she could see you now, she would not want you spending the rest of your life punishing yourself for ten seconds of instinct, and letting it erase every night and day you gave her out of nothing but love.

My tears running over my face, when I read this.

It’s time to let go.

And after few days, I had read a statment from a book about life and death. There was a phrase that struck the chord in my mind.

Death of loved ones is not scary. It means Love now surrounds you across two realms…anchored by those who hold you in this world, and fiercely protected by those watching from the other side of the world.

Thank you for reading.