My Aunt

My Aunt is the most selfless person I know. When my mother died years ago, she left her life in Penang for a year to go to Kuantan to look after us. At that time, Kuantan and Penang seems very far away. It was 12 hours by car on trunk roads. It probably is further to someone simple like her who never left her hometown before but she did it anyway for us.

She also looked after my uncle who has Schizophrenia for around 20 years till he died. My grandparents had sent my uncle to an institution but they took him home after seeing the diplorable situation there. At the time there were no drugs or treatment given and my grandmother was shocked to see him being beaten up and bruised. I think it probably broke her heart as a mother. So she took him home to care for him herself.

After she died, my aunt took over caring after my uncle. She did so without complain for years till he died. It must not have been easy but she did it anyway. She bathed him, washed up his poo etc and later on when he became semi paralysed by a stroke she continued to look after him till his death.

After the time when I was 10 and she came to look after us in Kuantan, I  had the chance to live with her again for another year when I was 17 and studying in Penang. It as an unhappy time for me then. My family was split, not emotionally but physically. We were all living apart at different places. Dad had just been transferred to KL. My eldest sister was working in Kuantan. Big Brother had just moved to work in KL. Second Sis was away in campus in Penang and Second Bro was away in Singapore studying. I had nowhere to go so dad put me with his brother’s family. My uncle and his wife had a large family. He had 2 sons and 3 daughters and he rented out a room to two young men and all of us stayed together in a 3 room single storey house. It was very crowded and my uncle’s wife was not happy so I decided to go to Penang to live with my aunt instead.

I remember once I had a very bad tummy ache and she came and rub ointment for me at night and gave me medicine. A few other times, she made special traditional chinese medicated brews to help me with my menstrual pains. Those were the closest I felt to how it was like to receive a mother’s love.

And so, I am glad, really glad that hubby made it possible for me to go and see her recently while she was down in KL recently for her only daughter’s graduation convocation ceremony. Aunty was so proud and happy. I am glad we managed to take a few photographs for her together with my dad. At first I was worried that dad would not be up to it. He had been sleeping all day, waking up only for meals. Eventually, we managed to wake him and take him to Kajang to see my aunt and he was alert and responsive enough during dinner.

It was a long drive to Kajang and later to Subang Jaya before driving back to KL but its worth it. It was worth it even though my girl said she had the unreal feeling again which worried me a lot because it may be a partial seizure but I won’t go into details about that here. This is a post about my aunt.

I am very grateful for such a wonderful aunt and I hoped that she will be blessed with more happy moments with her family. No one deserves it more than her.