My gran

I'm sad to tell you that my gran passed away on Tuesday night. Her time of death was 11pm Malaysian time, so it would have between 4pm UK time. She died of a heart attack.

My gran had her first heart attack on Saturday around 12.30pm, as she was getting things ready for my birthday dinner. We didn’t know what was happening and we thought she had had an asthma attack as she was breathless, so we took her to the clinic (she has asthma and has had attacks before). The clinic was terrible. While I was there I kept thinking of how my medic friends would just be horrified with the staff, service, hygiene (lack of) and how they kept equipment. The receptionists had not conveyed the right symptoms to the doctor and so she couldn’t see him for another hour, even though she kept telling them she was in a lot of pain. They thought she was over-exaggerating and kept her waiting. Eventually, the doctor did and ECG and saw that she had had a heart attack and had to be taken to the hospital immediately.

It was her wish that my birthday was to be celebrated, so we did the best that we could and actually had a good time. The food was great and all my cousins provided our entertainment – they were all so cute. After the party, I got to go see my gran for the first time since she went into hospital. (The visiting hours are not as strict as in the UK.) She looked weak, fragile and very tired. She had had another minor heart attack since being in the hospital. Over the next three days, she began to improve very gradually each day so on Tuesday, the day she left us, she looked the best of all. She had stopped coughing and they had removed her oxygen mask. She was smiling and laughing and giving us orders, so when we left the hospital that evening, we were convinced that she would be out in the next couple of days.

At 10.30pm, my uncle received a call from the hospital saying that my gran was in a critical state and asked us to come to the hospital. By the time we got there, they were already trying to resuscitate her and ten minutes later, the doctor told us she had had another heart attack and could not be resuscitated. It was a shock to us all, as we’d only seen her 4 hours earlier and she was looking better than she had for the last four days. She was smiling and laughing. Appropriately, the last thing she said to me was goodbye, after I’d kissed her goodnight.

The funeral was on Friday. It was a Hindu ceremony and my mum and I had no opportunity to say that we didn’t want to participate because of our belief as Christians. A lot of the ceremony was just rituals that have been passed down from generation to generation. There was no time given to talk about how lovely and wonderful she was. No time for thanksgiving. And the crematorium was awful. It was very basic and nothing at all like the crematoriums in the UK. She was put into a giant, metal incinerator. None of the disappearing into the wall or the floor business you get in the UK.

My family are devastated. It was so shocking and unexpected. They keep looking at the negatives of it all. Yes, it is sad she died, but even at 64 she had lived a full life. She had traveled to India, China, Australia, the UK and France. She had seen her grandchildren grow up. She had touched so many lives and so many loved her. She was blessed and she didn’t suffer. It is especially sad that her birthday is on Sunday and she will not to celebrate. Neither can we because Hindu ritual says we are not to celebrate anything for a year. How sad. My gran would’ve wanted us to celebrate. My consolation is that she had said the sinner’s prayer twice – once on Sunday and once with me there on Monday. I know I’ll see her again one day.

If you’d like to pray for us, pray that my non-Christian family will be consoled. My mum’s Christian friends have shared with my family about Jesus and have been such a great help to my uncle and granddad. Pray also some, if not all, of what they’ve said has sunk in and will make sense one day. Pray also for all the decisions that have to be made about my gran’s things and what to do with my granddad and the house, as my gran and granddad lived there by themselves. Pray also that my mum will be comforted, as she is being brought down by all the negativity around us.

Thanks to all those who already knew and kept us in prayer. It was God’s time for her to go and there was nothing that we could do to stop it. Please continue to pray for us, especially my uncle, aunt, granddad and brother – they keep going over the ‘what ifs’ and we all know that that isn’t helpful. The next few weeks are going to be hard, but I’m glad that my last memory of her was of her smiling and laughing.