Edvantage - A grandson's farewell

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A grandson's farewell

Li Shengwu | Edvantage | Thu Oct 7 2010

Li Shengwu's touching eulogy relates how Mrs Lee instilled a love of learning in her grandchildren.

"To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, And a time to die;
A time to weep, And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, And a time to dance;
A time to gain, And a time to lose.."
Ecclesiastes 3:1-6

President S R Nathan, Distinquished guests and family who are here to honour my grandmother's memory, Ye Ye, Pe Pe, Gu Gu, Papa.

One of our family's abiding institutions is the Sunday Lunch. Our three (once four) generations gather to Oxley Road on Sundays and share a meal. When I was little, the grandchildren tended to eat far too fast and play far too loudly. I remember Nai Nai's good humour as we mistook her rocking chair for a climbing frame. In lieu of a television, Nai Nai provided a tall, well-stocked bookshelf next to the childrens' table, and thereby contributed much of my early childhood literacy. She chose our books well, and the selection was expansive, ranging from Peter Rabbit to a picture book on exotic animals (on the lowest shelf), from Roald Dahl to Arthurian legend (on the higher shelves). I never saw what was on the highest shelf; it was a very tall bookshelf and I was not a very tall child.

Little did I suspect that the best books were on a yet higher shelf; up the stairs and in Nai Nai's bedroom, where she kept the accumulated stories of a lifetime's reading, a hoard of Chaucer and Shakespeare, the Sejarah Melayu, Confucius and Mencius, to which the cheery bookshelf downstairs was a mere shadow or stepping stone. The King Arthur of Roger Lancelyn Green occupied the downstairs bookshelf; the King Arthur of Thomas Malory held court upstairs. Without her urging or insistence, I inherited her love of the kind of stories that are now called fairy-tale or fantasy, but used to be, simply, stories. It took me more than a decade to discover The Odyssey, Beowulf and Le Morte D'Arthur, but Nai Nai had the patience to sow the kinds of seeds that take long to fruit.

Nai Nai had the benefit of a classical education, and upon returning from my studies overseas I discovered that she had long been reading the Greek philosophers that I had late come to appreciate. Well-worn copies of Plato's Republic and Symposium occupied places near her bedside. I wish we'd had the chance to talk about them.

It is well to say that Nai Nai lives on in memory, but she was more than memory. She was a great person; lively, quick-minded and kind. Her passing is to us an inconsolable loss, and it cuts keenly. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has for decades been a family favourite. In its final chapters, at the parting of the fellowship, the wizard Gandalf counsels, "Go in peace! I will not say, 'Do not weep!', for not all tears are an evil."

Ye Ye and Nai Nai's lives are a story to occupy many volumes. Coming late into the narrative, I am a minor character who has missed many chapters. I cannot bear witness to the earlier plot twists, climaxes and denouements. But I know that they have loved one another steadfastly, through many trials and joys. The Bard tells us,

"Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom."
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Nai Nai and Ye Ye have been, to me, an example of that kind of love.

Nai Nai's grandchildren arrived relatively late in her life, and she loved each one dearly. When Huanwu and I were children, we became entangled in a book on Cat's Cradle, a game of string figures played with a loop of twine and four hands. Seeing our difficulty, Nai Nai carefully unknotted our initial attempts, and showed us new spiderweb configurations mentioned nowhere in the book's pages. She passed to her grandchildren a love of learning and reading, as well as the kind of knowledge not found in print. Samuel Butler wrote,

"I fall asleep in the full and certain hope
That my slumber shall not be broken;
And that though I be all-forgetting,
Yet shall I not be forgotten,
But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds
Of those I loved."

We love you, Nai Nai, and we will remember you.

Li Shengwu 6 October 2010

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Keywords: Kwa Geok Choo , Lee Kuan Yew , Li Shengwu , eulogy , wake , grandmother

Readers' Comments

Sheng Wu is pretty intimidating to talk to. Even his parents can't out-talk him. So it's not surprising that he was voted the best speaker in the world university debating contest. What an honour for Singapore.

Posted by people on Wed, 13 Oct 2010 at 20:26 PM

Well, there is such a thing as free and open elections. So what guan are you talking about man! If by the time Sheng Wu is ready to contest - that is, if he is interested in politics - and the oppies still can't pull their act together, who is to blame? Now, they say MM Lee is choking them till they can't breathe? After he is gone....? Sheesh.

Posted by smickno on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 at 10:25 AM

Is this title trying to create a mandarin position 官 for someone? If so, then can this idea be applied to the local system?
Alternatively, is this title trying to encourage someone to work hard to serve the people?
If so, then this person must start from the bottom to get to know the problems and find solutions for the populations.
What people want is solutions, not brilliant display of words.

Please dont go backward to olden china, selecting 官 by just passing examinations 科举. Once becomes官, money and wealth wld roll in, that was the objective. Stop this kind of old ideas please, our kids will not buy it.

As parents, we want new generations to find someone who has new visions for this little dot, new plans to bring down costs of living and raise their incomes. .....

Posted by last_laugh on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 at 10:09 AM

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