Dear Grandpa,

I am not ready for a life without you. Today I woke up and I thought of death, and I felt it all around me. I always knew that life was a futile thing, that no matter how hard we try to love and make meaning out of life, and hang out to each other’s promises like a last cigarette, I knew that we were all going to die.

I showered and kept thinking of you. How nice it would be if I visited you in hospital. You probably wouldn’t recognise me anymore and you might even shout at me, but I know its still you. I have always loved you like you have always loved me. And like unrelenting Singaporean summer my love will always burn bright for the only grandfather I’ve ever had.

I remember how, back in the day, I would be so excited to meet you and bask in the attention and concern for my life that you always had. That no one else except Auntie Ma and Mummy would have. You would ask me, and like a flower gently unfolding to the first few splinters of light in the early morning I would tell you. You seemed to be so proud of me and who I was, instead of who you wanted me to be. And I was grateful for that. I knew you could be a harsh man because I hear things when you’re not around, but as long as you cared about me I didn’t really care about that.

I want to tell you things like I used to. But different things this time. Deeper things. Life has been so hard recently, thinking about you, the family, my mother, and things at school aren’t exactly peachy either. It’s all very suffocating sometimes but I’ve been recently finding some comfort in trying to find God again. I’m not sure if you’d approve exactly what I’m trying but I just need something to hold on to right now and honestly God was just right there, a lifebuoy out of nowhere in the middle of a huge storm at sea. My life feels affirmed and worth living when I think of God, sometimes.

I guess I just had to write this down because I don’t know if I will ever visit you, even if I really want to. I am too afraid to love even if it’s too late. But as long as the sun hangs high in the middle of the day and until my own hair begins to grey, I will always remember the warmth that you were to me. And like any other person I’ve ever loved or tried to love, I have loved you and will always love you more than you will ever know.