Letter to my late father

Dearest Dad,

It’s been three years since you left us on Aug 7, 2016. Well, I finally retired from The Star on my birthday in late June. It coincided with our maid Wiji going on home leave for six weeks, so the job of housekeeping and looking after mum fell on me.

Today I will tell about how your dear wife is doing. I am actually grateful for the opportunity to pay Mum more attention.

I guess it’s like making it up to her because she always had to play second fiddle to you.

I have been cooking her meals, emptying her overnight urine bucket, bathing her and making sure she takes her meds on time.

I also found out certain things I had to correct. Like her decision to stop the evening insulin jabs, which was why her blood glucose readings were so high and her doctor was forced to keep increasing her insulin dosage.

She also didn’t bother to swab her skin with alcohol wipes before she tested her blood and injected the insulin. She does now.

With my excellent cooking – haha – she is eating better and with her back to twice-a-day jabs, her glucose readings are below 10.

I have been able to reduce the amount of insulin too. So I am pretty pleased about that.

Also, because I bathe her, I am able to check on her skin and feet.

She has a bad rash in her belly fold and I had to dig out the slightly old zinc ointment we used to apply for you.

I also discovered how hardened her plastic house slippers had become. Because she has lost so much sensation in her feet, she didn’t know she had a cut on top of one toenail and the left slipper was chafing her instep so badly, it was creating a sore.

I had to hunt for a new pair and throw out the old one.

Doing all this for Mum isn’t hard at all. Like I said, I actually am glad I can because for years, I had used work as my excuse to minimise my time with her.

She has always been difficult, cantankerous and extremely sensitive all her life.

To be honest, you spoilt her, Dad, because you always protected and gave in to her.

Old age hasn’t mellowed her. At 85, she is even harder to manage because she is often confused.

Her thoughts can be very random and she still insists she knows best and has the best memory!

There is no doubt she misses you and she is lonely.

I do try to spend more time with her and accept that, in her mind, I am still the foolish child she has to constantly correct.

Fortunately, I have found a “safe” topic, which is food and cooking as that was her forte. I ask her on how to make certain dishes and soups and we plan to make her famous mee siam soon. She has been listing out all the ingredients to me.

But I am a Wong girl which means I, like my sisters, can cook! No false modesty here.

I wished I had cooked more when you were still with us. Now, when I come up with a good recipe of my own, I will go, “I think Dad would have liked it.”

Mum? She never praises me. The only concession I get is, “You cook better than Wiji.” But I know she must be okay with my cooking as she usually cleans her plate!

Now that I am doing the housework, I am in touch with things around the house again.

And there are some things which remind me of you and what you did for me, dear dear Dad.

There is our dog Mambo’s litterbox, which you made and I clean up every day.

It is as sturdy as ever and you made it just the right size so that the paper we use to line it with fits perfectly.

Then when I clean my external water filter, I see the cover you fashioned out of discarded metal rods and leftover polycarbonate sheet to protect it from the elements. I bet no other house has their water filter so well covered.

The first week I took over the kitchen, my wok cover handle broke. So I had to go to the hardware store in PJ Old Town to buy a new one.

I brought the old cover along to make sure I got the right size. When the shop assistant looked at it, she said, “Oh, that’s not a wok cover. It’s a bowl you put handle on it lah.”

That was when I realised this was another Made-by-Wong-Heck-Ming special because that wok cover came from your house.

You had used an aluminium bowl, drilled two holes at the bottom and fitted the plastic handle. Once I realised its origin, I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

There are other things of yours that are useful and handy. Your toolboxes in my storeroom are like Mary Poppins’ bag. Every time I need to fix something, I can find what I need in them.

But Dad, I really have to do something about your stuff in the garden shed and outside your bedroom window.

I haven’t opened the shed in, I think, four years. I have no idea what’s quietly rusting away in there and outside the window.

So now that I am on permanent leave, I will have to tackle them. I have asked my handyman Vincent to give me a date to come and help me go through your tools and advise me on what I have to throw, sell and keep.

I hope you don’t mind.

Mum has also been talking about clearing out your clothes cupboard.

That is something I would rather do with my sisters because I think that will be really hard to say goodbye to.

Dad, you know your kids doted on you because you were always so lovable, kind and uncomplaining.

But with Mum, it was always so much harder because of her volatile temperament.

That’s why you worried about how she would fare without you as her buffer and shield.

But we all made a promise to you we will love and care for her no matter how difficult. I just want you to know we are doing that.

So rest in peace.

Love and miss you.

Aunty would like to invite readers to her read-and-greet session at Popular Mega Bookfair at Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre on Sunday (Aug 18) at 4pm. Her book, So Aunty, So What?, a compilation of many of her columns, is on special sale at the fair and Popular bookstores.