it's difficult when your family is at a different stage of mourning from you. they're missing him in their daily lives now - whereas for me that is being delayed - he isn't a part of my life here in cambridge, and it's when i get home that the difference will really hit me. and even now - i've been fairly okay for the past two weeks - and now i'm crying often and suddenly again. i talked to my aunt for the first time since the beginning of may. i'm almost afraid of going home - no matter how normal i seem to feel - everytime i talk to my aunt i start to cry again. when i call i'm almost afraid she would answer the phone - my cousin did today, and told me about the new room, and how my aunt has chosen a cream-coloured day bed and a pretty carpet and how they've fitted sliding glass doors for the room so that we can look out on the garden while having long afternoon teas - and then she put my aunt on the line before i can say no no and my aunt said, first thing, are you okay? and i started crying immediately. i don't know why - because she knows that i am not okay - and she addresses it directly? maybe. "when you come back we'll take you to see uncle's ashes (they're interred at the columbarium at the church) and you will move on from there. you need a holiday, you want to go to melbourne to see your friend [min yin] - just tell your parents you need to go and go - whatever it is, just do whatever you have to do, and you will find your way from there." i think that would be part of it, being there at last, and not grieving at a distance, but there are so many other things i felt excluded from - truly it's not that i think they have an easy time - they're the ones who've had to be there giving care to my uncle - i don't know how they can find the strength - my cousin had become so thin and strained - but they've also been there daily - saying their goodbyes - being there while he slowly slipped away - but i was away all this time - i've only been home, all in all, two of the last twenty-two months - and always fearing that i would not be home in time - and knowing - because i thought he would die in january - how painful it would be when it did come - the real thing, not the rehearsal. i feel hurt and angry that they seem to be able to move on - though of course they should - or perhaps i feel hurt because i feel left behind - and alone. i am suddenly thinking about one day in january, about four days after i'd got back - the first two days he completely could not recognise people - but then he got more lucid - and when my aunt asked him, do you recognise min zhi, he managed to say - barely a whisper - but everyone heard him clearly: "of course lah" not yes, but of course. and that was when i really cried. you know how everyone heard grandfather say "saffy"? - that's how it's like.