All Saints Home, Block 1, Room 2, Niche 194

... is the final resting place for my grandmother.

(until the lease runs out at the place sometime within the next 30 years and pending whatever actions the authorities might take)

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I have never had a close experience with death before. The passing of my grandmother last month brought it home to me, but even then, I was a few thousand miles away when it happened.

There was already a foreboding that it would happen sometime soon - before I left for France at the end of August, I made sure I saw her again at my uncle's place. She was weak and not able to say much to me. I don't even know if she recognised me. And like the numerous occasions on which I had visited her, I said my greetings and my few words of tepid encouragement, then proceeded to chat with my uncle and aunt from whom I could understand her condition better. After a while, grandma got tired, and the maid wheeled her back to her room to get some sleep.

Sleep. She was always sleeping.

That was the last time I saw her alive. That was the last time I saw her in any physical form (I see her in my sleep sometimes - a younger, more sprightly person - the grandmother who brought me shopping for toys as a little boy). That was the last time I said goodbye, and I did not even say it to her because she had gone to her room to rest.

Then I went to France and about 3 weeks into the French immersion at Fontainebleau, dad hit me with the news that my grandmother's condition has gone bad. She was hospitalised, gone into the ICU, and doctors gave the prognosis that she has less than a month to live.

I remember being stunned speechless and unable to respond, the voice wavering and about to break. I forced back tears while talking to dad, and my housemate driving the car seemed to sense something wrong in my demeanour: I was always acting so tough in front of her. I made sure from that point on to always call my dad - every couple of days or so. He was my only link left to grandma. And he was her favourite son: he will feel the loss THE most.

A couple of weeks later, the bad news hit and she passed away. I remember vividly that night. There was a party at some chateau, one of those themed events in INSEAD, and I didn't feel up to going. I came home from a dinner with a friend, and promptly logged onto the internet, doing the usual job application and surfing around that characterised the period of September and October 2006. Then the sms came and I sighed a sigh of relief and anguish: she has died.

Last saturday and it was time to go see her, yet it felt like there is no point anymore. She has died, with a plaque and fake flowers to mark her final resting place, filed away among other remains like in a library. Little was I to know that, when you visit the dead, it is not just about the one dead person you're going to see. It is about much more and I am glad I went.

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So what of visiting the dead?

I learnt about memories we keep as human beings, memories we retain of people we have lost. A lot of emotions get invested in our friends and family when we live, and when one passes, the loss is felt so tangibly by the people around one.

Many people try to retain that memory, and I saw it so much at All Saints Home (in Punggol). Even while this is a place housing urns of ashes, people still managed to build up shrines in memory of their loved ones. Fake flowers adorn every niche; some leave post-it notes behind, cut in the shape of hearts; soft toys for those who died young; little adornments with much love behind them; pictures; tributes - some left behind obituaries pasted up beside the niches. Physical manifestations of their love for the departed, hope perhaps that the dead might see, that the dead might hear their prayers.

There were other things that were visible among the dead: birth dates... and death dates. What is it about the human compulsion to note the two dates, however meaningless to the rest of the world, that bookend our existences?

But I saw patterns... me? I always see the sad ones.

A girl who lived a mere 9 years. The picture showed a young lively person in her school uniform.

A boy, aged 18 when he passed away. The items decorating the niche indicated a girlfriend in his life, and parents who miss him a lot. Him in his army No. 1 uniform. I can't help but think it is an accident while he was serving NS.

A family of 4 occupying an entire bottom row of a column. All died on the same day. Perhaps a suicide pact? Car accident while on holiday? Did the father face financial troubles and decided to end it all? Did it make the news? (a cousin who was with me couldn't help muttering something about it being in the news...)

An old woman, her niche unadorned with fake flowers (the caretakers do not clear away items from the niches and thus discourage real flowers). The plaque is yellow with age and lists simply her birth, death, and the typical "Gone home to be with her Lord". No one has visited it.

Physical retentions... and the pain is very real. But when I depart, what do I want to leave behind?