Happy Chinese new year.

Every chinese new year we would do the same things. We would pray first at the temple. Then we would go to the old folks home to see Ah Po. Then we would go to Granny's house. Then we would go to Another Ah Po's house because the old folks home near to their house. Then we would go to Ah Ma's house for steamboat.

But this year is a different year.

Ah Po, the one at old folks home, has died. She had no funeral and was immediately cremated. Its sad that such an industrious old lady would die in old age alone without a funeral.

she was my mom's friend. When my mom was young she would give my mom free trips on her trishaw to the school because my mom was going to school with her children as well. My mom would remember and keep in close contact with her for 30 odd years. In her entire 88 years long lifetime she accumulated a savings of $10,000 in her bank account (which her grandchildren used to pay her medical bills) even when she's surviving on 80 cents per meal. When she was still healthy without stroke, she worked as a cleaner (she is, like 60 70 plus, she took care of one of her mentally ill grandchild. She scrimped and saved and got a stroke. Then she lived in pain and suffering as she complained that the nurses in the old folks home stole her ang pao money. This we will never know, but this paranoia, living with it everyday for many years...
Fate has blessed her with a long and tedious life without the happy ending.
We visited her every year while she was in the old folks home. And when she moved to another old folks home we visited that one as well.