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My Mother, Mrs D, in 1957, during the celebration of my first birthday. |
MUM gave me music. Mum was my door to journalism. She taught me to write and speak the Queen’s English. And she’s left me not knowing how I should spell my name.
NO TWO ways about it. I’ve spelt my name wrong all my life. I am approaching 69 as I write this, behind me are years of professional journalism and sub-editing, for which a cardinal rule is, Get the facts right. Get the name right. And, within weeks of finding out I have a critical disease, I realise I have mis-spelt my name all my life. Every certificate, byline, signature, all wrong.
Like most of my life-changers, the truth lay in Sentul.
It starts with my wanting to put down all I can remember about Dad and Mum (see Ol' Man River for Dad), soon after the medical diagnosis. I need major surgery. No option. Between diagnosis and surgery are a few precious months. I may not survive it. If I do, the prognosis may still be bad. I am reeling. What do I do? How long may I have left? How do I spend what may be my last two years, maybe less. Out of nowhere comes this burning compulsion to pay my respects, say thanks to all the people who nursed, nurtured and shaped me, put it all down for the record, asap.
And so, because I may soon die, I return to the time my father comes to know he will soon die. There is no maybe about it for him.
As it turns out, in wanting to go back to Dad, I discover Mum.
SHORT version begins:
Mum, Dad, Errol and I are living in a single-storey KL terrace. It’s 1960. Home is along Jalan Pipit, in an area they call 2nd Mile Ipoh Road, close to Sentul. Just beyond our very small backyard, and before the edge of a sprawling golf course, is an elevated cement platform, perhaps two feet high, the surface marked with three or four access blocks, made from the same cement, cut into squares big enough or a good sized man to pass through, with cast-iron handles. I learn later that all the septic waste pipes in our area pass below this platform. It is my playground for cowboys and Indians. We are a happy family. Mum and Dad have enough for a maid, to look after me, and Errol, when he returns from school.
I imagine news of Dad’s illness visits our modest idyll about this time. I don’t know if Mum and Dad know it is terminal. Dad decides to seek treatment in Singapore, to stay there with his parents, his sister and her daughter. In any case, he is too sick to go to work in KL any more. Mum has a job in KL, but she wants to be by her husband’s side. In three years, he will be gone.
With job references from her KL employers, Mum finds work in Singapore. I have not begun schooling. I am about four. Mum, Dad and I head to Singapore for Dad’s treatment, while Errol stays with Mum’s parents and siblings, the Emmanuels, to finish the Malaysian school term.
Years later, Mum recalls all this in Sydney, speaking with Peggy Heng, my wife’s sister. Peggy was a well regarded journalist with Malaysia’s The Star during the 1980s, going undercover for some assignments, delivering exclusive reports that consistently heaped discomfort on a government that scorned public accountability.
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| Peggy Heng Tsu Chen |
Life has schooled Peggy to learn men and women are treated differently. She comes to bear her very own torch of feminism, and sees in Mum — fluent in
English, mother of two who lost her husband 10 years after marrying him, and held down various jobs to provide for her children — a woman whose life story should be told. My sister-in-law draws out her story, getting Mum to speak into the cassette voice-recorder she’s carried since her time as a journalist.
Peggy’s recordings tell me more about Mum and her early life than I ever knew myself. I regret very much that I did not find the time and space to tell Peggy what a treasure she had left behind for me, when she was alive.
“Eric and I were worried about Errol moving from school in KL to one in Singapore.” Mum’s voice carries loud and clear over the stereo system I have at home. “We didn’t know how he would cope and adjust. But he did very well and got excellent exam marks at the Singapore school. His father and I were very proud of him.”
In Singapore, we live on the ground floor of a two-storey bungalow along Kovan Road. Dad passes on 3 December 1963. Mum’s father, my Dadda, has already made it known he wants his daughter to return to KL and the family.
Short version ends.
FROM the age of six, Mum, Errol and I live with the Emmanuels, moving with them from one rented house to another in KL. It will be 15 years before I leave the Emmanuel home, at 23, to marry. So I know a fair bit about Mum’s people [Emmanuel is Hebrew for ‘God is with us’ — Chapter 11: We are Emmanuel].
But a huge void is all I have for Dad’s people.
So, eight years after Mum passes in 2015, and 60 years after Dad leaves, I’m trying to put together the story of Dad’s people. This is 2023. A few false starts and dead-ends later, I find out about someone who is part of Dad’s immediate brood. I have a phone number. On the very day I speak to him, he’s about to visit a female relative of Dad’s, to celebrate her birthday. She is most likely Dad’s first cousin. I tell this chap it will be beyond wonderful if I can speak with the woman I believe is my last living aunty on Dad’s side. I want to promise her I will visit on my next trip to KL. I imagine this will be the door to Dad’s people.
But after that one phone conversation, he pulls up the drawbridge, just doesn’t answer the phone when I repeatedly call from Sydney. The message is clear, and some of the things he has said in that one phone chat come back with a stinging clarity: When I tell him I don’t know how much of this life I have left, he cuts me off with, “So, what do you want from me?” It’s not an offer of help, there is no friendliness, but at the time, I didn’t want to entertain the thought blood can lose all its colour. Some time later, I’m talking to another same-blood who actually has some regard for people, at the Backyard Pub & Grill in Sri Hartamas, Kuala Lumpur. Backyard is always a good spot to find same-bloods. “He’s like that,” the friendly same-blood says to me, laughing into his beer.
So, the guy whose behaviour shouldn’t surprise me is a dead-end.
I know I have three first-cousins, children of Dad’s sister, Evelyn. The eldest, Portia, is from Aunty Evelyn’s first marriage in Singapore, to an American GI of Jamaican descent. I believe his surname is Hemanns (He-merns). I remember Portia very well, because we live and play together during my time in Singapore. As I hit the double digits in Sentul, Portia is a few years older, a fashion model whose exotic mixed looks carries her into the photo spreads of women’s and lifestyle magazines in Singapore and Malaysia.
My other two cousins, Audrey and his sister, whose face I can still see but whose name I can’t recall, are from Aunty Evelyn’s second marriage, in Malaysia. My aunty takes as her husband a man I know as Uncle Syed, a distinguished looking Muslim, fair of skin, eyes that look grey or green, depending on the light, well-cropped dark brown hair, slick-shave moustache, big mole beside his lip. Everybody speaks of his royal Middle Eastern line.
I remember Aunty Evelyn’s family with Uncle Syed because, after returning to KL, Errol and I often spend weekends with them in their home, south of KL, in Seremban. Uncle Syed picks us up on Friday, drives down to Seremban and returns us to Mum by Sunday night. They are well off. I remember a big bungalow, lots of running space for five kids, a very kind uncle, day trips to the Pedas hot spring and a doting Aunty Evelyn.
I have not kept in touch with my cousins since leaving for Sydney. I know that Errol, font of the family who’s-where-and-what, was in touch with the sister. But he is gone.
So, I find myself left with Mum’s side for the backstory. But, before I go back to Sentul for Mum’s story, I must share a lasting anecdote on Uncle Syed.
MAY 13, 1969. Murderous mob violence breaks out in KL, politically orchestrated and contemptibly disguised as race riots by the establishment. The horrible killings, burning and looting are made to look like Dominant Malays vs Everybody Else (Chinese, primarily, and the wider Indian community). The truth lies elsewhere, in the murky waters of an electoral loss by Umno, the dominant Malay-only party in the government coalition. It’s a state poll in Selangor, where sits the nation’s capital, Kuala Lumpur. The Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party has won, and is celebrating publicly. It is a long-held belief that the Malay party simply cannot countenance the outcome, and its leaders organise the violent unrest that is officially labelled as race riots.
The world since 2021 knows of ‘lockdown’, from the time of the Covid-19 virus. In Sydney, freedom of movement is limited within a 5km radius of your home; grocery runs are regulated. Enforcement is hardly iron-fisted. The violence of the Malaysian rioting in 1969 gives us a 24-hour shoot-on-sight curfew, no questions asked, bullets speak first.
Uncle Syed is at the time a senior police officer in Selangor state. Important point here: For official purposes his identifier is Muslim, and he is a special ‘Malay’ because of his lineage.
It is the second or third day of the curfew. Three squad cars, lights flashing at noon, sirens screaming, bring Uncle Syed to our Sentul home along Jalan Kovil Hilir. In full uniform, he gets out of the car, removes his officers’ cap, tucks it under his left arm, along with the officer’s ceremonial, silver-knob baton. A junior officer follows just behind, carrying bags of food. The scenario is, in the middle of the once-in-a-lifetime violence, presented as racial fighting by the government, a very-senior police officer marches to our door. He is ‘Malay’. We are Indian. From opposing sides. Junior officer silently hands over the bags of food to someone. Uncle Syed booms out a greeting to whoever’s at our door. I know he’s not come to take us to Seremban. He turns around to look at the street behind him, left and right. The whole affair has been played out to tell everybody on the street that, in these worst of times, in the midst of this racial violence, this Indian home is protected by a ‘Malay’ police officer, so don’t anyone dare.
A senior police officer in Selangor has, in very loud fashion, come to us, a family of working class Indians, to deliver food. To Mum’s people, the Emmanuels. We know people — I’m seeing this for the first time ever. In these horrible times, it is there for everybody else to see, in noon-blazing glory.
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| Dad, Mum, birthday boy and Errol |
DAD was born on 30 August 1926, in Georgetown, the capital of Penang island, off Malaysia’s north-west coast. At the start of this quest for Mum’s story, I knew Mum was born in 1929, but not where. I know so little about the woman who gave up so much for the two boys who could do no wrong in her eyes, looked after us for the better part of two decades, prayed for us and put our needs before hers every single day of her life.
The good news is, before departing Malaysia for Australia in 1990, Mum had gathered whatever she could find that related to me, official papers, newspaper clippings, memorabilia, as her parting gift to me.
About 30 years after arriving in Sydney, I search for that trove, desperate to know about a woman who would be 95 if she were alive, a life story that began in another country more than 4,000 miles away. Disease cannot distract the obsession I brandish about the house to find out about Mum, and it masks the shame I seethe with, for knowing so little, not knowing how much I didn’t know. You have to nearly die to realise what’s important.
And then, there the papers are, in all sorts of envelopes, plastic sleeves, shopping bags. The few are a rich find. Everything is in this old-world box file, thick as a bible, A3 in size, made of hard cardboard shrink-wrapped in thick plastic, with a push-button on the cover’s triangular flap to hold it closed. Back in the day, box-files are common in Malaysian homes, brought back from some big event someone has attended. The cover of this box-file, unearthed in Sydney, reads ‘International Amateur Athletic Federation, Coaching Course, Malaysia 1977’. Probably brought home by Mum’s younger brother, Uncle Marcel, who also officiated for various sports associations in his working life, notably in the fields of hockey and athletics.
I digress again to say Uncle Marcel introduced me to that deliciously suggestive Walkin’ My Baby Back Home, composed by Roy Turk (lyrics) and Fred E. Ahlert (music) in 1930, and recorded a few times over the next several decades by various crooners, including Nat King Cole in 1951, whose version hit #8 on the music charts. I can still picture the man who was named Marcel Anthony Lee Christian Emmanuel at birth singing it, snapping fingers like a metronome, at Christmastime in Sentul. I am about eight the first time, listening to lyrics like:
She's afraid of the dark
So I have to park
Outside of her door till it's light.
She says if I try
To kiss her, she'll cry
I dry her tears all through the night.
Elder brother Uncle Joe probably accompanied him on guitar until Errol knew enough to take on playing duty. King Cole’s version is on YouTube, with lyrics.
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| Emmanuel family sing-along in the Jalan Kovil Hilir, Sentul home I grew up in. Uncle Marcel is far left, Uncle Joe is playing my Ibanez guitar, Mum is behind him, with Uncle Clarence and Aunty Floby at right. Also in the photo are Ted Boy (2nd left), Uncle Clarence's son, Suresh (centre) and Dr Vijay from the clinic across the street (behind Suresh). At the back are Aunty Letty, Cletus and Aunty Beatrice [photo enhanced by Marina Emmanuel]. |
BACK to the box-file. I come across school report cards, clippings of my newspaper reports, memoriam cards, examination certificates, program sheets for shows Errol and I have performed at, random photographs. There’s church stuff, certificates of the day I receive the First Holy Communion, and my Confirmation (which introduces ‘Martin’ into my name). In the Catholic lexicon, ‘Confirmation’ is when you become a soldier of Christ at a special church service. The archbishop officiates, you stand before him at the altar, he calls you by your soldier’s name and he gives you that slap everybody has warned you will get (it’s a slight tap on the cheek, and he wears a white glove). The Confirmation name is never used in official documents.
As I sieve through it all, filling in the blanks in my life, I strike gold. It’s a Certificate of Extract from (the) Register of Singapore, issued by the ‘State of Singapore’. Mum’s birth certificate. Mum’s name is listed as ‘Not Registered’, but the piece of paper records Mum’s parents, Anthony Chrisostum Emmanuel, or Dadda, and Annie Lopez, Amma.
So. Finally. Margarita is a Singapore child, born on 23 October 1929, at the Maternity Hospital, Sepoy Lines, in Singapore. So, both my parents are island-born, Dad a Penangite. Mum’s birth cert notes that both Dadda and Amma are Malabari by ethnicity. Malabar is a region in south-west India that includes Kerala state, home of the ethnic-Indian Malayalees, ‘my people’. Mum's birth certificate.
The person who officially brings the news of my mother’s birth to what would have been the office of Singapore’s registrar of births and deaths is one W. Sanderson, and he is another thing I didn’t know I did not know. His signature is on the certificate. W. Sanderson was most likely male, a British national, caucasian, holding a senior position in either the civil service, or the private sector. In the British colony of 1920s Singapore, such a person would have had the authority to notify said registrar of such birth, and to have it officially recognised and recorded. Sanderson’s word would not have been questioned. He was most likely known to Dadda, who worked with Malayan Railways.
COMES the day I realise I also do not know when my parents married. There is no marriage certificate in Sydney, but I know where it will be: The marriage was solemnised and registered at the Church of St Joseph. Where Helen and I marry. It’s in Sentul. Bears repeating.
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| Dada escorts Mum down the wedding aisle. |
“So, Mr de Cruz, you don’t know what year your father and mother were married,” Uma says. It is not a question, I am answerable for my failing. Simple as that. She kindly adds, “At least, it’s one of two years.”
Uma withdraws the first two dates she comes back with, apologising for administrative errors from more than 70 years ago. Then, she pins it down. Mum and Dad were married on 6 April 1953, and that’s that, as one might safely say. I ask for a copy of the certificate. The day after, Uma emails a digital copy, obviously not of the original. Digitisation has a template, and all the information is superimposed on an image of Joseph the Carpenter, top-left, two plain wedding rings top-right, and a photo of the church as the general background.
I see a typo. Dad’s surname is listed as D’Cruz. But I know it’s de Cruz, no apostrophe. Details from the original 1953 certificate have been incorrectly entered into some sort of digital illustration program. I am rock certain. I know how to spell my name, right? For decades now, I have many times corrected those who presume they know how to spell my surname. “No, no,” I always say. “It’s small d, small e, space, capital C, small r, u, z.” That’s exactly how Mum herself has spelt it out. So, it must be wrong.
Thanks very much, Uma, but there’s a mistake, I say as politely as possible. My father’s surname does not have an apostrophe. And Uma says, “Wait ah, let me check.” She comes back to say, “I have just checked and it’s not a mistake.” Wordless pause on my end. And Uma wraps it up: “Your father’s writing shows capital D-apostrophe.”
“Well, we don’t do that, Mr de Cruz.” I wondered if Uma envisions the cap D-apostrophe when she says my name.
“May I speak to the parish priest?” I say, impertinence escalating. Now Sentul hits the wordless pause, until Uma offers, “Father is out now, but he will come back in the afternoon and I will ask him. If there’s anything, I will get back to you.”
I know I am being very pushy for a guy who doesn’t know the date his parents married. I can’t help it. I am a late starter on family history. I need this. Like that, lah.
The day after my chat with Uma, she emails me, attaching a scan of the original marriage certificate. And there it is: D-apostrophe. By my father’s hand. Dad has written out his full name and signed his marriage certificate with a spelling I have never used all my life. A spelling I have been taught not to use, by my mother, Mrs D. My father’s father, Grandpa, the witness to the marriage, has signed the same way. Ernest D’Cruz.
It is an authentic e-copy, with Latin words for name, witness, place of birth, date and all the rest, as is the case with the Catholic Church in 1963 Malaysia. The image is stained and watermarked by time, humidity and creases. People back home in Sentul have painstakingly embarked on a major data-entry project to preserve the information contained in original documents. And in the case of my parents’ certificate, they have not made a mistake.
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Mum's original marriage certificate, in Latin. |
I break the news to the WhatsApp chat group Helen and I have with our kids. And, boy, they trip out. “Who AM I? Who have I been all my life?” (Sara). “Me no likey” (David). Helen is most disbelieving of all, because “Your Mum was always correct about these things, and she always corrected any one who wrote D-apostrophe.” Ben is too busy at work to say anything, but calls later that night. “So what’s all this about, eh?”
THERE is more to come. I notice that Dad’s name, which I have known to be Eric Ross Peter de Cruz, has been entered E. Eric D’Cruz. I understand that ‘Peter’ is the name Dad and his parents chose when he was a teenager, to mark his Confirmation in the Catholic tradition. So much for Peter. After giving it some thought, I figure the E stands for Ernest, Grandpa’s first name. Another discrepancy is Amma’s name. My maternal grandmother is registered as Annie Emmanuel on Mum’s birth records, and she is Agnes on the marriage certificate.
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The original marriage certificate, enhanced by Marina Emmanuel. |
The surname, however, is at the same time mystifying, and abundantly clear. At some point after Dad’s passing, clearly, Mum has decided to be known as a ‘de Cruz’. I will never know why, but the few papers in the box-file might suggest when she chose to begin using this new identity, so to speak. Mum’s signature, after Dad’s death, will put it all to rest.
I know where it can be found. I take out the La Salle School report cards that carry my term-by-term examination marks, all of which have been duly signed by Mum. I see the comments and signatures of teachers from as early as 1964, my second year of schooling. And there they are, Mum’s signatures, so carefully affixed term after term, year after year, all of them so identical they might have come from a rubber stamp.
And bewilderment morphs into total confusion.
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| My report card; (below) close-up of Mum's signature. |
Every single official document shows my surname as ‘de Cruz’, and where it calls for Mum’s signature, it’s ‘MdCruz’. Nobody has questioned it.
I’ll never know why all these contradictions exist, and how come each is true. There are no answers, and there I was thinking I had the correct questions. Brings to mind Jesus Christ Superstar, and Pontius Pilate’s words to Jesus:
And what is truth?
Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths.
Are mine the same as yours?
And so, a few months before I turn 65, I realise I have got my surname wrong all my life. That Dad’s first name is Ernest, not Eric. I may never know why Errol and I were taught (by Mum, of course) that our surname is ‘de Cruz’.
Singapore Boy!
LOOKING for Mum uncovers I could have become a Singaporean. Among the papers Mum has kept is an official enrolment form showing I was registered to begin schooling in 1964 at St Gabriel’s School, along Upper Serangoon Road. It never came to pass because Dad passed away on 3 December 1963.
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Singapore school registration form (above and below; front and back) |
MY family decides to stay what we have been all our life — ‘de Cruz’. Eric is still my Dad’s first name. For me. That’s my business. For decades after his passing, Mum has kept a heavy piece of marble on which is inscribed his full name, and Eric is cast in stone as my father’s first name. There is no Ernest. It is part of a tombstone that marked Dad’s grave in Singapore’s Bidadari cemetery. His remains rested there until they were exhumed in the early 1980s when Singapore reclaimed the land for use as part of the island state’s metro rail network. That same headstone now marks Dad’s space in the columbarium at the Church of St Francis Xavier, better known as SFX, in Petaling Jaya, the so-called satellite city to KL.
Using ‘de Cruz’, knowing it’s not Dad’s surname, may not be correct, but it’s right for us. I have Uma’s patience and kindness to thank for showing me what my true name is, even though it briefly turned my world upside down. The next time you see me, don’t presume you know me. I didn’t. And I am perfectly happy to be the person I didn’t know I was.
It goes back to Mum. Gone and still rumbling through my life, shaping and re-shaping everything. But, this chapter is not about me, it is about Mum, and what better way to start than by putting on record her correct name. Mrs D will always be Mrs D.
*****
“I WOULD have been four years old when my father sent my mother and her first five born to Trivandrum in India, south India, for a vacation.” Mum’s own words, her voice, comes through on my hi-fi system. It’s Peggy’s 1997 conversation with Mum. They are speaking in the kitchen of our first Sydney home, 7 Carrington Street, in Summer Hill, and I have CD copies of the interview, originally recorded on cassette. My sister-in-law, the former journalist, is all ears with Mum, who speaks off the cuff.
Upon their return, Mum’s dad (my Dadda) is transferred to Seremban, capital of Negri Sembilan state, in Malaysia. He is working for Malayan Railways, a British institution built in colonial Malaya. Mum schools in Seremban until Standard Two, when Dadda is transferred back to KL. Mum is enrolled in Convent Bukit Nanas, KL, which is regarded among the best schools — if not the best — for women. Then and now. I would not have known if not for Peggy.
“Then, World War Two broke out. I did not go to school during the Japanese Occupation.”
Dadda is recalled to Seremban. “It was the British Military Administration, BMA,” Mum says. “I went to the Seremban Convent for Standard 6 and Standard 7.” Dadda is then called back once more to KL, where Mum returns to Convent Bukit Nanas. “Did my Junior Cambridge in Standard 8, followed by the senior Cambridge. And that was the end of my formal education.”
NOTE: Formal education for Mum’s generation was the British system, or the ’Cambridge system’, as it was colloquially known in Malaya. Junior Cambridge was the Lower Certificate of Education (LCE); Senior Cambridge (year 11) was the General Certificate of Education (GCE). A GCE pass allowed you to progress to pre-university studies, or the Higher School Certificate (HSC). The exam papers were set in Cambridge, England. The Cambridge education system was implemented by the colonials in Malaya, Singapore, India, Pakistan and Jamaica.
Armed with a pass in the GCE, my mother then finds work with the railways — “The children of employees were given preference for employment,” Mum says, referencing Dadda’s job. The railways quickly morphs into one of the biggest public-service employers in Malaya. If my memory serves me properly, I read in the now defunct Asia Magazine that the production line of the main workshop in Sentul was an engineering marvel that, along with rail tracks, wagon wheels and other train-related materials, also delivered munitions, which made it a wartime target in WWII. The Japanese takeover of British-administered Singapore and Malaya had occurred early in the war. During this Japanese Occupation of Malaya, Allied Forces bombed the workshop twice in 1945 to render the rail infrastructure useless for Japanese transport. American B-29 Super Fortress heavy bombers, taking off from West Bengal, India, struck first in February. The second strike was conducted by British and American bombers in April. Records show that nearly 70 per cent of the buildings were destroyed. It all happened just months before the Japanese surrender.
IN THE the Emmanuel family, my Aunty Floby and Mum follow Dadda to work in the railways, though the children have clerical jobs at headquarters, located in the city, smack opposite what would have been KL’s central station, while Dadda works in the administrative offices set up in Sentul.
Mum stays with the railways for four years, during which time she does a private secretarial course. Before completing the course, Mum is interviewed for a job as a junior stenographer.
In her own words: “I had no typing ability. I had one month to brush up my typewriting. Which I did.” The interview goes well and Mum lands her second, one-step-up job with Harper Guildford, an outpost of a London-based firm that found rich pickings in the colonies.
TWO years later, Mum marries, becoming Mrs D’Cruz. It is an arranged marriage. “To be married when I was 23 was not very strange. There were girls who marry even younger. But, I had a good life with my parents, although we were not very well off, and when I married my husband, Eric, he was a very good man, and I had a good life with him too.
“We two struggled because, in those days, salaries were not very great… about $400 or $500 each, from which the rent would have to go, wages for a maid … as both of us were working, and the children came, and they were still small and stayed at home.
“I was married, an arranged marriage, and I followed my husband to Singapore, where he was working in the Royal Air Force” (RAF),” as a stenographer.
Determined as ever, Mum also secured a stenographer position in Singapore, with the RAF as well. The newly-married couple lived on the island for three years before both were transferred to KL, to work in different sections.
Another detail comes to life from the original marriage certificate, which lists ‘stenographer’ as the occupation, for both Mum and Dad. Lightbulb moment: When I underwent training at The New Straits Times, I took to touch-typing and shorthand quickly, both essential skills for a steno. I guess this particular apple didn’t fall far from his tree.
Not long after, as Mum tells us, she moved back into the “commercial sector”, and her first corporate employer was General Electric Company (GEC), another British conglomerate that brought more of the 20th century to the developing economies of countries in what was commonly referred to as the British Empire. (Keep in mind that being part of the Empire, in Mum’s time, was a matter of pride and opportunity for many people in the colonies. People had a sense of belonging to a government system perceived as better than most. Moreover, it opened the door to university studies in Britain for Mum’s generation, and the children of their children’s children. Malaysians still count Britain as a favoured destination for university studies.
I don’t know if it was Mum’s demeanour, her distinctive English diction, the way she carried herself in mixed company, or the modern, Western women’s fashion she embraced, or all of that and more, but Mum found more than one job as secretary, or personal assistant, to managers in the British business sector. From GEC, where she held a job as private secretary to the general manager for four years, Mum moved to Fraser & Neave (F&N), the bottled soft-drinks company that brought a range of aerated drinks to Malaya, including the much loved flavours of sarsi, ice-cream soda, cherry and orange crush. In her last major stepping stone, Mum took the position of private secretary to the managing director of Malaysia’s The Straits Times (before it got renamed The New Straits Times, in the aftermath of the Federated States of Malaya booting out Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore).
“I stayed with F&N for four years. when I had to leave them to join my husband, who became ill.”
Mum tells Peggy, “He was fun loving, very fond of movies, and there were some pictures that he had drawn of some of the older film stars, especially the ladies … Ava Gardner … Vivien Leigh, (the Gone With the Wind character) Scarlett O’Hara …. people like that.” (The preceding chapter, Ol’ Man River, depicts Dad earning side money lettering and painting movie posters.) Mum soon shared in Dad’s interest in films and the people who made them. “He liked to have a good life. And I’m proud to say that he enjoyed a good one, till he became ill.”
In Singapore, when Dad became too ill to move about, Mum left F&N in KL to be by his side, and to find work there. It helped that she was born on the island just off the southern tip of Malaya. As Mum tells her story, they were “very good-paying jobs” that allowed her to look after her two boys and meet the medical expenses Dad’s treatment incurred.
“But time was short,” Mum says, and the man she loved became quite ill in November of 1963. She recalls: “I had to rush home a couple of times, when his mother would call me at the office, because he was asking for me.
“Then on the third of December, he died at 10:50pm and was buried the next day. We left Singapore a month after my husband died, as my father wanted us to be with him so that he could look after us.” Mum is 34 by now. She has two little boys to bring up, and eventually let go of. Neither will be easy.
She brings us back to KL, to Dadda, Amma, uncles and aunties, and they are like multiple parents. Mum’s people. The Emmanuels open the door to us, and it’s like there never was a door. Dadda and Amma's second-born is the first to marry. She has two children, then becomes the first in the family to lose a spouse, and comes back home, to family. Errol and I are the first and second born to an Emmanuel. We are Josy’s children (to use Mum’s home-name). Errol and I are now as Emmanuel as we are de Cruz. Simple as that.
Mum does not remarry. In 1963, Margarita de Cruz, Josy to loved ones, is a woman young enough to fully love another for many years to come, have children if it be their will, bring heart and hearth to another soul. She speaks often of “Eric” to my brother, Errol, and I.
Margarita de Cruz leaves this earthly coil behind on 7 May 2015, at 86. As I continue this blook on her birthday, 23 October 2024, Mum will have been 95.
A smile like sunrise. Beautiful woman. Jet black, wavy hair, always cropped. Fair-skinned. Moles and little spots. Petite hands. Soft hands. Small feet. I have Mum’s small ankles. Gentle in the face. The first adult woman in my life. Loving mother, wife, sister and daughter. This much I know. In recipes of hers that she hand-wrote for me, in little cards I still keep, Mum ends with, “Serve with love and affection.” Five words that speak to everything my mother means to me. I am her son, very proud that she is my mother. Mum will come to do anything for me, and I shall do no wrong in her eyes.
SENTUL was very much a working class district in my time. It’s gentrified now, high-rise condominiums stand in gated estates, bungalows dot the roads, private schools sprout. People with connections to the highest offices in Malaysia acquire land for a penny here, and build on it. More roads lead to Sentul now.
In the old days, it’s mostly civil servants from the rank-and-file, and many families have work histories with the Railways. Government quarters are appropriately developed, big landed homes in choice neighbourhoods for managers and executives, less than modest terrace blocks and low-cost low-rise for the sweaty blue-collar.
At the time, Sentul grows around the biggest railway yard in Southeast Asia. Mum’s sisters and brothers have all grown up in the world of this huge network that is the Federated Malay States Railways. By the time Independence makes the transition, more and more executive and management positions are occupied by Indians, Chinese and Malays. In this environment, Mum will bring the experience of working with big British companies to her work for new Malaysian concerns.
IF MUM had lived to see the death of Elizabeth II, she would have been broken-hearted. She would have intently followed the spectacle of QEII’s funeral. In her time, Mum is in thrall with the fairy tale come-true of the princess who becomes queen. Mum is the willing subject amid the realms and territories of Her Majesty, so much so she subscribes to magazines that devote page after colour page to the Crown to keep up with the latest in 20th century Elizabethan dress sense.
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Mum (4th left) sits next to Errol, with Uncle Marcel (standing), wife Aunty Mary (green sari, right), her sisters, aunties Amani and Rose (1st and 2nd right), attend a family reception in Lee Wong Kee Restaurant. In the foreground are my Lopez cousins (from right) Ann, Jane and Leslie. |
Today, her godchild and my first-cousin, Lucille, has claimed the hats Mum left behind; I imagine the gloves are simply lost forever.
Extending the Elizabethan connection, Mum speaks what she herself calls ‘Queen’s English’. How does a little boy know? I don’t know, but I know what I hear is how English should be spoken. You hear every word, pronounced without accent. I will take to speaking like Mum. She is always on about proper English and manners. Don’t refer to someone in the third party if he or she is present. Neither of them is. Either goes with or, neither with nor. And, as risqué as it gets with Mum: “Tables are meant for vases, not arses.” She points out mistakes in headlines, news reports. Reads like there’s no tomorrow. Lots and lots of paperback love stories, some thick as a brick, dog-eared and browned by time and petite fingers.
WHEN Mum returns to work in KL, back with F&N, Dadda arranges for a taxi to take his daughter to and from work, Monday to Friday, half-day Saturday. Mum’s dad cannot see his bereaved daughter catch a bus to work.
Ensconced in Sentul, one early birthday is marked by an all-neighbourhood-kids-invited cake-and-soft drink party in the unused padang (field) adjacent to 85 Station Road. It must have been the first birthday since Dad’s passing, and I now imagine Mum on overtime, helping her two boys move on.
Working for F&N allows Mum to hire, at subsidised staff rates, a veritable playground — slide, merry-go-round, two-seat swing, see-saw — the real things, just smaller than usual, delivered by lorry and set up by workers who know what they’re doing. It’s installed on Friday afternoon, and we have it all weekend, until it’s dismantled and driven away by lorry on Monday. The drinks, in wood crates, and cakes are also brought in at staff rates. It’s all most unusual for our little part of Sentul. Then again, so is Josy.
“Don’t it always seem to show, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone?” (Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi.)
Of course the weekend playground is extravagant, very little cost or not. Mum is a widow. She has a simple job in administration. We don’t have much in savings, if anything.
Her family sees the second eldest, the first to be wed, the first to lose a spouse, widowed within 10 years of marriage. Dad was the first in-law, his passing the first in the family. Everyone is watching Mum cope, and if a weekend playground is part of the road to some sort of recovery, well, they have no other answers, have they?
At the same time, having been dealt a bad hand early in life, Mum does not play the victim card. Looking back, I now see a woman who harboured both an inner confidence that expressed itself quietly, and buckets and buckets of pride in herself. No one says Mum is superior, or lent to elitism. They just know Mum is less than common among women in our neck of the jungle, a particular character, individual, quite apart.
FROM F&N in the late ‘60s, Mum hops to The Straits Times, Malaysia’s national English newspaper, where she is confidential secretary to the managing director. In some holding companies of that time, the MD is the equivalent of today’s CEO. A confidential secretary has access to restricted corporate documents. Mum keeps his diary and appointment book.
Ministers sweat to meet with him personally, their secretaries look up to Mum, trade little secrets to get into her good books. Mum tells me these stories as I grow.
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| Group photo from The New Straits Times days: Mum is flanked by Malaysia's beloved writer Adibah Amin (seated centre) and news editor David Thambyah. Among the executives standing are group editors PC Shivadas and Tan Sri Lee Siew Yee (3rd and 4th left) and Dr Munir Majid (5th right). |
On one of her visits to Sydney, Mum tells me she also fields phone calls from ministers themselves, who want both to win the MD’s favour, and the promise of positive newspaper coverage. The Straits Times is the widest-circulating newspaper by far, and the MD can shift the ground for business and politics through the newspaper he runs.
Mum also reminds me about how she would answer calls from the MD’s wife No 1 and No 2. And I remember those calls usually come well after 8pm, after we have recited the family prayers. Mum has most likely told them not to call between 8 and 8:20pm, when we pray. Some nights, both call. There’s been a flare-up. And as Mum speaks to me, I conjure the image of the ultimate diplomat, pillar of support, understanding, empathy, consolation, though Mum would never describe herself like that. They are very nice ladies, both of them, she says. And not a bad word is spoken of the boss. She still takes it all in her stride, recalling the episodes as her call to duty.
For me, Mum’s working Saturdays are a highlight. I ride shotgun in Mum’s booked taxi.
Mum’s office is in Bangsar, in the top floor of the paper’s headquarters. She has her space adjacent to a door that leads to the MD’s office. I am allowed in his room, but only for the library. It is the first library of my life. There are books everywhere. The office is about 10 times bigger than the Sentul living room. Shelves and shelves of books, all behind glass. I have no idea what I pick up to browse through, but Saturdays are a total joy, an experience like no other. Food mysteriously appears from the office canteen, for Mrs D’s son. In time, I get to meet the newspaper’s librarian, Mr Ellington Kennard, who takes to me like another benevolent uncle, except he’s British. About 11 years later, I will work for the first time in the same building, as a cadet journalist. By that time, Mr Kennard has retired.
Sundays, I accompany Mum to the wet market in Chow Kit Road, downtown KL at the time, where nearly all the buildings are two-storey affairs. It’s the mid 60s, Chow Kit is an area from which someone on a motorcycle can hit the city centre in less than five minutes. In return for carrying the bag of market stuff, Mum will first take me to the area where all the food-stalls are set up. The term food court has not been created. I have the same thing every Sunday: yong tau foo and kon-loh mee, which remain my go-to dishes more than 60 years later. The Chinese aunties who run the stalls know me, Mum has made arrangements. Just about when I am finished, she returns, we find a taxi to go home and I earn my keep. Rich reward for carrying a bag to and from a taxi. I don’t know it then, but the China syndrome has begun coursing through my life.
The only time we take a train in those early days is for the annual journey Mum, Errol and I make to Singapore, to pay our respects at Dad’s grave in the Bidadari cemetery. We take the overnight train, with sleeping berths. The ticket buys us a proper ‘English breakfast’, as Mum calls it, in the buffet car. Bulls-eye eggs, sausages, bacon, baked beans and toast. We also drink coffee. It’s a proper, old-fashioned Malayan Railways buffet car. The tables are much the same as today’s pull-down version, except for the thick, white linen tablecloth and napkin, heavy, white breakfast plates, heavy metal fork, knife and spoon. All the butter you want and triangles of toast. We do this for about three years. We leave the KL railway station on a Friday in early December, for the 10pm overnight run to Singapore. We return on the 10pm Singapore-KL leg on Saturday, and we’re back in our Sentul home for lunch on Sunday.
Those Saturdays in Singapore are eventful not just because we pray at Dad’s grave. Mum’s way of showing us we are ‘fine’ and doing okay includes a quick visit to the Robinson’s department store in Singapore, or CK Tang’s, where she spoils us rotten by spending her good, hard-earned money on ‘nice clothes’ (understand this as ‘not cheap’) for Errol and I. Honestly, I just cannot picture Mum buying anything for herself on these trips. On a particularly extravagant outing, each of us gets what’s known as Beatles boots, for which she pays the fortune of $32. Each! I know because the price is imprinted in my mind. The first to marry and the first to lose her husband gets the scolding of her life when she gets home. It is a fortune. She should know better. It doesn’t help that she’s also decided the boots need jeans. Lee’s dungarees.
I imagine Mum goes to work the next day telling herself she is an independent woman, because I cannot see anybody getting the better of Mum. And nobody will tell her how to bring up her children. The giveaway, however, is the fingernail. Bitten to narrow bands of keratin.
Growing up, Mum often buys Errol and I matching clothes, new shoes for birthdays. When long pants come along, it feels like a rite of passage. Mum buys us cowboy outfits (rodeo pants, vests, hat, holstered toy-guns). One such birthday, Errol is dressed like Robin Hood. I guess they don’t have a Friar Tuck get-up, so I don’t remember how I might have partnered Errol. Definitely not the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Photos are a big thing back then. Many people cannot afford cameras, the smartphone is a good half-century away, and we have photo studios where we go to record special occasions. You pose in front of a drop-down screen (you can chose your background), a cameraman goes, “Okay, one, two, three” and clicks the camera that sits atop a sturdy, wooden tripod.
One week or so later, we return to collect a little photo album, each printed photo often embossed in a corner with the studio name and logo. Sometimes the photographer delivers the album to our home. Eventually, our family will arrange these photos in bigger, hard-cover photo albums. Sixty years later, I have a whole set of these albums, and many of the photos are preserved very well, stuck to a hard-cover page with a light layer of glue, protected from dust by a thin film of plastic, held fast to the page by the glue.
*****
EARLY schooldays. Mum is not a woman who sits back and accepts things as they are, if she thinks teachers are not doing the right thing for her children. No, she visits principal to report errant teacher. There’s Mum, walking to the principal’s room in broad daylight, for all to see. Unheard of. I feel like I have to change school and wipe away this record of events. It happens on three occasions.
#1. A teacher tells our class it’s public caning for anyone scoring less than 80 in the coming exam, and I take the threat seriously enough to get sick with fever.
#2. Another teacher is seen at St Joseph’s Church one Sunday, with a revolver tucked into his pants. He has the temerity to go up to Mum and make small talk.
#3. Bakat TV. Errol, his best friend, Clifford, and I successfully audition to compete in the second instalment of a TV talent-time series that generates a lot of excitement and news. It’s like Malaysia’s Got Talent, except it’s a feverish few months in school that 1972.
Newspapers and entertainment magazines make the most of homegrown and budding talent, and our trio gets a fair run of publicity. I am young, excited and hugely distracted from studies. But as far as my family, the neighbours and the whole church community are concerned, three Sentul boys are gaining national attention as singers and musicians. School? Yah, well….. Even my fellow students who don’t like me, and often bully me, give me a break. Mummy’s boy is now a hero. But my grades slip. And my class teacher, a Malayalee lady, writes this comment in my report card: “Bakat TV has gone to his head.” Mum calls to meet with her in the principal’s office. I don’t know what is said, but Bakat TV is never mentioned again by the teacher, and her attitude towards one of her students softens somewhat. I will meet with this teacher years later, at Mass on Sundays. I am 18, and just starting to leave a mark as a journalist. Regular bylines. I also lead the youth choir at church, playing guitar and teaching harmonies. My former teacher is always happy to see ‘her student’, and I see her chat happily with Mum after mass. Probably comparing notes.
Looking back on these events now, I see these episodes as the first examples in my young life of standing up for the unspoken ‘social contract’. I can think of no exception to the idea that everything we do, paid, voluntary, out of love and caring, comes with responsibilities and consequences. Mum is the first person who shows me that you can demand that people account for the discharge of their responsibilities. Not getting that fair outcome doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. They may not listen, but we are all free to speak up, thump the desk if necessary. Mum. The activist.
MUM brought the arts into our lives, taking the baton from Dad, going with us to the movies. On one occasion, Errol, Mum, our neighbour Sony (VU Kumar) are treated to Love Story, with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw. The three of us guys feel so privileged. I am proud as hell that my Mum will do this.
It’s like Mum has an instinct about the link between her sons, and creativity, music, the arts. She gives us books, subscribes to Reader’s Digest and Life magazine, buys box sets of vinyl records that come as special subscriber-offers from the magazines. For the first time, Errol and I listen to The Ray Conniff Orchestra and Singers, Pat Boone, Perry Como, The Brothers Four, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Bing Crosby, Connie Francis, Doris Day, Peter, Paul & Mary, Bing Crosby, Jim Reeves, Marty Robbins. Somebody in the family buys a Blaupunkt gramophone-radio set, all polished hardwood, pull-out control box and radio dial, built-in stereo speakers, turntable. The record-player is going all times of day and night. The family home, 20 Jalan Kovil Hilir, Sentul, becomes a gathering point for our friends, who come to listen to music. They are all very polite and friendly with ‘Aunty’.
Bottom line, Mum brought music to my life and opened my mind to a wide variety of singers and musicians. Add the growing-up environment of birthdays and Christmas celebrations livened up by Uncle Joe’s guitar leading a lot of family group-singing. Everybody but Uncle Joe, a teetotaller all his life, is just that much more jovial on Caldbeck’s Ruby Red Wine and TST Hospital Brandy, and a river of music just flows through us. It’s like Mum and her family implanted the music DNA in Errol and I. No wonder we both go our ways into the music-for-a-living world further on up the road.
Mum buys Errol his first guitar. It’s a gorgeous Pearl acoustic, not small and not the big-bum jumbo (dreadnought) guitar that I come to favour years later. Pearl has a great fretboard, an exceptional feel. I hear this from Errol and Clifford, and of course it’s gospel. Pearl’s not cheap. Later, in the last three years of secondary school, Mum gives me money every month to go into town and buy myself a vinyl, and I sometimes come back with two, off the discount rack. Now it’s my turn to introduce Mum to music. Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Kris Kristofferson, Andy Williams, Marmalade, Shirley Bassey, The Hollies, Gladys Knight & the Pips, the Temptations and, later, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, America, John Kay. Meanwhile, I am learning to play, watching Errol and Clifford as they lead our way to Bakat TV.
Mum listens to every new album I bring home, reading the liner notes of any cover hanging around. I can tell it’s a bit of shock when she looks at Diamond’s Hot August Night. There he is, pictured from the thigh up, long hair like a halo, eyes downcast, denim jacket with Native Indian embroidery, tight denim pants, his hands looking like he’s trying to conjure flames from his crotch. She loves the music.
I once again conjure my niece, Kathleen: “She continues to do this with her grandchildren. In time she learns to hum the tunes of the Weekly Top 40 - Hoobastank's The Reason is one she likes and picks up the lyrics to.
“Iconically, it becomes the song by which we discover there's another budding singer in the family — Brendan — who performs the song for a local radio station in order to score tickets to watch the band perform live in KL.”
MUM doesn’t think Dylan can sing but notes that he has written Blowing in the Wind and the Olivia Newton-John hit, If Not for You. Kristofferson, she totally falls for. She learns the lyrics to quite a few of the songs on his debut, and otherwise hums along. By the time Kristofferson releases Silver-Tongued Devil & I Mum is enough of a die-hard to be really upset when she sees the cover: Kristofferson has shaved his face clean. She doesn’t get enough of the soundtrack to Pat Garrett & Bill the Kid (starring Kristofferson and Dylan) and forgives Kristofferson his clean-shave days when he marries Rita Coolidge and records Full Moon with her.
To further illustrate how our music entwines with Mum’s life, it’s her editorial colleagues in the New Straits Times (NST) Group who write about us during the Bakat TV years, Eric Peris being one of the main reporters in the performing arts world of the time. In Eric’s case, of course, his reports also carried his photography.
When I come through the Malaysian Certificate of Education (MCE; my country’s version of the British GCE), the school break before the two HSC years is about five months. I begin to sing in pubs. My first gig comes about because Errol gets the mumps and needs a stand-in. Music-wise, Mum is my No 1 fan. Whenever my friends find space in a car, Mum comes along to watch me at the pub. It’s a real kick, watching Mum, BGA or G&T being her go-to drinks, in the company of my friends, happy, cheering me on. Margarita de Cruz. My mother. In a pub. Hanging out with my best friends. Mid-1970s KL. Unheard of.
MUM is still with the NST Group when I apply for a job as a cadet journalist in 1978. She works in the same building, though no longer for the managing director.
I am selected for a written interview. Days after I sit for the entry test, Dr Noordin Sopiee, the group editor, calls our home telephone, to speak to me. Says hello, tells me who he is. Gets straight to it. “Why didn’t you answer the question set in Malay?” Oh, I reply, I thought it was optional, only to be answered if you were applying to work for the Malay language paper (my command of Malay was so bad I totally misread the instructions for that one, “compulsory” Malay question, also written in Malay).
And Noordin closes with, “I am only offering you the job because I know your mother, Mrs de Cruz, personally.” There you have it. It was because of Mum that the door to journalism was opened to me. Mum’s name got me my first job, as a journalist in the country’s leading English language newspaper. At NST, I am Mrs D’s son.
IN A FEW YEARS, Mum, the second-born, sees her #2 do exactly what she did: get married before #1. Mum opposes my marriage. She should know better. Mum was the one who fronted Dadda, her father, about 60 years ago, when Dadda objected to Mum’s younger brother, Uncle Joe, wanting to marry fellow teacher Florence, a Chinese lady. He just “will not have it”. Mum, recently widowed, privately reads him the riot act of that time. Dadda, of course, relents and gives his blessing. The first inter-racial Emmanuel marriage comes to town, and stays. Precedent set.
Once my deed is done, however, Mum becomes Mum again. When Helen and I visit No 20 as a married couple for the first time, it’s all smiles. I think Mum realises she better be nice to the woman who will take over looking-after-me duties from her. Before long, these two women in my life are fast friends. Helen loves her stories. Mum loves to talk. Mum also loves the idea of grandchildren.
It’s late 1982 when Helen falls pregnant. Mum and her siblings await the first child of the new generation for both the Emmanuel and de Cruz bloodlines. But complications develop, the pregnancy is fraught and complete bed-rest is ordered by Helen’s treating specialist. We move to live at No 20 a few months into pregnancy. Helen, ordered to bed-rest, needs help, if the pregnancy is to have the best chance of coming to full term.
When things stabilise, Helen and I return to Hartamas. By this time, Helen and I have a house-mate in Jai Chandiram, an Indian national seconded to Radio Televisyon Malaysia to help improve the national broadcaster’s service and production. Loves her whiskey and smokes like a coal-fired train engine out of the Sentul railway workshop. Jai becomes a very good friend, and is embraced by the folks at No 20.
Before seven months lapse, the waters break late at night, on the 27 August 1983. I rush Helen to Assunta, and Jai cradles my wife in her lap in the back seat of our Mazda 323. On 29 August, one day before my father’s birthday, a child is born. Christian Eric de Cruz. He is a lovely infant. Fair, full head of jet black hair. Fingers like a pianist, I immediately say to myself when I see him for the first time. But Christian will not survive beyond a few hours. Our first child, Mum’s first grandchild, is born and gone before anyone else at No 20 can see him.
It is not long before Helen falls pregnant again. When David arrives, it’s like magic in No 20. Everybody dotes. That our son is actually de Cruz does not make him any less Emmanuel. At least once a month, Mum stays with Helen and I.
Mum retires about this time. She is the eldest living Emmanuel child since the passing of her elder sister, Lawrencia. As naturally as the rain falls, and true to my mother’s character, Margarita de Cruz gives away most of her retirement savings to her siblings and their families. She just does. Errol and I are not as shocked as you might expect. We are both relegated to the audience as Mum does what she does best, which is to love, care for and help those closest to her heart.
I had mixed feelings about this gesture, beyond generous, because, after all that Mum went through, surely she deserved the not inconsiderable sum of money to ease and comfort her in her later years. But I never said anything. Of one thing I was certain, however: This is Mum. The de Cruz in me would do very well to understand and learn from the living example that Mum set with the gifting, that charity begins at home, giving is a gift to the giver.
Errol marries Alice and tells me he wants Mum to live with him in the house they will make their home, in Gombak, KL, which is about 20 minutes by car from No 20. Dadda and Amma have passed on. Mum leaves her sisters, brother Gilly, and No 20 behind.
An era in Mum’s family comes to a close and, with it, Mum’s new beginning as a grandmother, a role she is born to, doting, protective, loving and embracing like the warm sun immediately after daybreak.
My mother finds another ally in Teresita Marquez, our Tessie, a Filipina who becomes our live-in carer. The three women are known to gang up on me. I probably deserve it.
In quick succession, Errol and Alice have Christopher, and our second child, Benjamin, arrives some 18 months behind David.
Mum’s stays with us at Hartamas become less frequent, and shorter, as Errol and Alice bring into the world Brendan, Kathleen and Kimberley. Two boys, two girls, her son and his chosen wife. Mum’s next job is cast in stone. She will look after Errol’s children and help to bring them up as both Errol and Alice tend to their own jobs.
EVERY time she comes to visit and stay with me, it less than two days I can tell she misses Errol’s kids. She calls and speaks with them every evening, long conversations with my brother’s kids. They must keep asking, “When you coming home, Nan?” Mum says, “Soon, darling, I promise.” What’s a No 2 to do but drive her to Errol’s? I’m happy if she’s happy. I’m happy her two boys have set up two homes for her.
Any and all charges laid against the grandkids are dismissed. Except when they speak. Here is Mum, all over again, correcting their spoken English. My kids whisper, “Whatever.” Errol’s kids laugh. Mum laughs. The kids say, “Nan’s bouncing.” There she is again. Giving her grandchildren English lessons at the dining table, like she did their fathers. The kids particularly like, “Tables are meant for vases, not arses.” Mum is loved above all else. Every one of them is ‘darling’ to Mum.
MUM flies for the first time about three years after Helen, the boys and I migrate to Sydney. My mother is well into her 60s when she catches an eight-hour flight to visit and stay a while. To help Mum cope with her first experience of air travel, Helen flies with her. In the years to come, Mum will make the return trip on her own, with the Malaysian national carrier, MAS, providing wheelchair and personal assistance from check-in to disembarking. Mum tells us she gets to chatting with the cabin crew and they, in turn, spoil the elderly Malaysian passenger who speaks the Queen’s English. I imagine Mum, as ever, not treating them like they are meant to serve her, instead being polite, gracious and grateful.
In our Summer Hill home in Sydney, Mum has two growing boys to serve. I’m quietly amazed when she decides to walk with them to school, 15 minutes uphill from our home on Carrington St. She walks up again to bring them back home, but not before she takes them to the fish ’n chips shop nearby, for french fries, fish bites or a fist-sized, deep friend ball of dim sum. It’s a daily routine, and pretty soon I can see that, in the eyes of the children, it’s now Mum who can do no wrong.
She is quickly a friend to our neighbours, stopping to chat with this or that one while she walks the kids. Mum makes friends very easily. Mum’s like that. She pays attention when you talk, whatever you have to say is taken seriously. One Christmas, Helen and I take her for lunch with my colleagues at the NSW Department of Education, where I have taken my first posting ever as a civil servant. And, just like some of my pale-skin workmates were with me, I hear one of them say to Mum, “Where did you learn to speak English like that?”
The children, including Sara, who arrives in 1994, just love her. Mum does not like it one bit if I am cross with any of them.
WITH MUM in Sydney, I am treated to all my favourite Indian food. At least three versions of pork spare ribs, vindaloo, pepper chicken, bawal (pomfret) fish curry, ladies fingers, string beans and long beans cut so dainty it can only be by Mum. My niece Kathleen again: “She's so mighty fussy about this. All must be symmetrical. :D
“ ‘But it's all going down the same way’ will not do.”
In Sydney, Mum uses the smallest knife we have; the blade is just about two-and-a-half inches long. It’s most comfortable for Mum because her fingers are actually small. She does all the prep and cooking nearly every night.
I am 40 when I pursue a university degree in Sydney, and Mum of course visits when I graduate from the Masters in Journalism programme in 2001. Not long after, I find a job as a sub-editor with The Australian. When I return from the late shift, she warms up my food while I bathe off the workday, and sits with me at the dining table. Sometimes, we talk till almost midnight, sharing some red wine or whisky.
She comes to like Australian reds. Helen’s two sisters in Sydney get along famously with Josy, and take her out every once in a while. Ginny and Peggy just love chatting with Mum, who develops a taste for fresh cream on scones. One day, I come to see the younger of the two, Peggy, sitting with Mum at the dining table, a cassette recorder and little microphone between them. Peggy, former journalist, is interviewing Mum about her life, childhood, living with World War II, bringing up two boys herself. Mum is especially proud of her work as confidential secretary to Junus Sudin, the MD at The Straits Times. Mum’s recall is something to behold.
Mum would have made three trips to Sydney, each time staying up to a month, maybe more. Each visit, like in our first KL home, I can tell she misses Christopher, Brendan, Kathleen and Kimberley, Errol’s and Alice’s children. At least once a week, I make the overseas call for her. And there she is, I can see her, leaning against the wall to which our phone is attached, in our Summer Hill home. Smiling as she talks. Eyes showing the attention she pays as Errol’s children speak with her. Wistful. It’s all darling-this and darling-that. And just like during her visits to Helen and I in KL, I see her miss Errol’s kids deeply. I see my mother’s love. It’s the way it is.
MUM’S 80th birthday is marked by an outdoor dinner celebration Errol and I organise, and hold at his home. The five of us in Sydney fly down to be there. Errol’s neighbours are told there will be ‘live’ music. A temporary roof, in case it rains, is arranged for, along with table and chair settings. A big crowd gathers in the front yard. Gerry and Jude Singho, the lead singers and players with KL’s most loved C&W band, Os Pombos, headline our little concert in the yard, Errol and I doing our turns, solo and together. Mum sits on her armchair, by the side of the main door, just by where we perform, taking in her ‘royal command’ performance. My big miss that night, and I’ll never forgive myself for, is forgetting to call on Uncle Joe to make his speech, which Errol and I had asked him to prepare. The party atmosphere and my forgetfulness are to blame, but dear Uncle Joe takes it on the chin and not a word is heard about the miss ever.
It’s 4am the next morning, guests are gone, Errol, our children, Helen and I, are on the street, singing as we stay mindful of the neighbours. I use the base of a plastic bucket to keep time. Mum’s tucked in of course. Till today, the kids will remind me that I keep shouting on that street that night, “I’m so happy. I’m so happy.” Because I really am. It felt like the happiest chapter in our lives as brothers, celebrating the wonderful woman who brought us up.
Since moving to Sydney, it’s the only birthday of Mum’s that my kids, Helen and I are present for. I do not countenance the idea Mum might want to have a Sydney birthday, without Errol’s kids by her side. I could ask, but I can’t do that to Mum. Some things you just don’t ask for. And that’s fine.
MUM is happy. But, as they say, the spirit is willing. My mother’s physical health is slowly deteriorating. She’s had two falls (shoulder - Sydney; hip - KL), both lead to fractures and the second incident requires surgery.
In Sydney, it’s late at night and we have returned from dinner with Aunty Thelma, the elder sister of Aunty Sowmy, who gave me tuition in my primary days, when we lived along Jalan Pipit and the family was intact. Thelma Mai (‘aunty’ is ‘mai’ for those we are close to, blood and otherwise) is visiting her son in Sydney, and invites us for dinner. In some phone conversation I don’t hear, Mum suggests that Aunty Thelma cooks pork ribs, “William’s favourite”. I park the car when we return home. It’s only when I notice Mum has not come out to cross the street that I get out to check. Mum’s flat on the road. She’s is conscious, and too heavy for me to lift. David carries Mum in.
It’s weeks before she is declared fit enough to catch the return flight to Sydney.
The second fall happens on the first day of a visit to KL. I have driven up to Errol’s place in Sunway in the car that Helen’s brother, Fook Sar, has lent us. Our three kids are with us. We’re taking Mum out for lunch. As I pull up, Mum’s waiting in the front yard, which surprises me, because it’s hot and she should be waiting in the living room. Thinking it will be easier for my mother, I reverse the car on the street that has cars parked on both sides. I look in the rear-view mirror and, in that instant, Mum trips. She is in pain. We call for an ambulance. I follow, keeping up and weaving across highway lanes, way over the speed limit. The ambulance finds the nearest emergency department, at Assunta. So many things come to pass in Sentul and Assunta. Mum is later moved to the University Hospital, on the advice of the Assunta team. The UH orthopaedic section is better equipped, Assunta tells us.
Having moved Mum to the second hospital, assured she is alright while she waits out the few days till surgery, Helen, the kids and I head for the YTL Resort in Cherating, in peninsular Malaysia’s east coast. It’s a treat for us, a longed-for holiday in a luxurious apartment, not the kind of expense we would normally bear. Late on our first night, Helen and I are preparing for lights off. Errol calls. The operation is scheduled for the next day. My elder brother summons me back to KL. “Your mother may not survive.”
I leave the next morning. By the time I arrive in KL, the surgery is over, all is well. Elder brother suggests I should go back to my family holiday. The Cherating leg of our trip is over by this time and I catch the bus to Helen’s hometown, Kuantan, also on the east coast, where my wife and kids await me.
Looking back on the event and all that followed, my niece, Kathleen (Errol and Alice's third child), tells me the fall comes at a time Mum is trying to regain some independence after the confinement of a hospital bed. Unfortunately, in her own bedroom, Mum slips on a wet floor - the result of her incontinence, removing her diaper, or refusing to wear it.
Discharged from hospital, Mum is looked after in the Sunway home by Errol's family.
A queen bed is swapped for a medical-grade hospital bed. The two boys, Christopher and Brendan, exchange their room with Mum's, so she may be closer to the living room, easier to watch over.
Errol, Alice, Chris, Bren, Kath and Kimberlee (Errol's youngest) took turns to stay at home - they could not all leave the home at once. The Sunway gang fed her, gave her baths, and changed her diapers.
As she recovers, they would find her wandering outside her room on her own - usually at night, when everyone had gone to bed. Pretty soon, even this shall not be enough.
Comes the day Mum is diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Of course. How could we not have known? The signs have been there. For about two years, Mum is no longer the Josy, Mum, Nan and Grandma we have all known. Not strong, afraid of falling again, Mum takes to bed a lot and, eventually, this will show when walking for a few minutes becomes difficult and, in her mind, fraught.
One evening in Sydney, Errol calls. Tells me he’s in bed when he hears a strange noise about 4 in the morning. He comes out of his room, and there’s Mum. In a dress. Looking for the keys to the door. She says she needs to go out. To the office.
WE HAVE to put Mum in an old folks home. I’m supposed to confine my mother, the woman who’s done the most and more for me, who’s spent nearly a half-century in the midst of a big loud family, into a facility run by strangers. Full-time. I feel I’m absconding. It hits me like a rock, slowly rolling down a slope. I know there and then I’ll spend the rest of my life pushing back on the guilt, shame and sadness, shoulder to stone. Flip side, Errol and I are thankful and accepting of the idea that Mum is by now less than aware of her surroundings. It’s enough that the people who look after her become familiar to her, as safe and caring faces in her daily life. She doesn’t know, so she doesn’t ’need’ to be among family. Truth is, Mum could be a danger to herself, and whoever she’s with. She could walk out of Errol’s Sunway home if no one is watching, set the flame in the stove at home, and walk away. In time to come, I see her dementia as a blessing. Mum is totally unaware of her condition, where she stays. She would have been a totally broken person had she been aware of her condition, no longer the young woman who fields calls from ministers, dressing like the QEII of Sentul.
My visits to Malaysia now are more frequent. It’s all to do with Mum and issues around her care, and the decisions that need to be made. I fly back on short notice when emergencies hit. One such fly-in, it’s Malaysia’s 13th general election, and Helen and I come home to cast our votes. People are wanting to oust a government embroiled in what will become the greatest financial scandal in history, to quote the US Justice Department. We have heard the rumours. Long-dead people on the electoral rolls. More than 100 voters registered at the same address. Immigrants encouraged to convert to Islam in exchange for citizenship, as quick as lightning, so they are eligible to vote. Voting centres in far-off places that cannot be properly monitored, run by less than impartial officials. They are doing everything to stay in power. The Sunday after voting day, I visit Mum. Her right thumb has the black mark that electoral officers mark each voter with, so no one votes twice. I cannot describe the shock. So, what’s happened is, government officials have visited the nursing home, getting inmates to put their thumbprint on ballot papers. My mother is a blissfully unaware agent in the scam. I ask the owner-manager of the home about it. And he says, “No lah, sir, we were just joking. Not government. We just played a game with them, told them they were voting.” The disbelief and anger must show on my face, he must feel the daggers I stare at him. Doesn’t quite look me in the eye. I see how it’s come down to this for Mum.
As it all dissolves, Mum’s sister, Aunty Floby, elderly and also unable to care for her basic, daily needs, is being looked after by my cousin, Sheila, and family in their KL home. A familiar situation unfolds. Aunty Floby also needs to be admitted to a facility, just like Mum. So there are two of them in the same facility now.
Comes the day Errol passes on. He’s 59. I visit Mum at the home to tell her. She hardly reacts. Dementia is an armour. Aunty Floby cries and cries for her favourite nephew. Not long after, Aunty Floby’s best friend of decades also passes on. We keep the news from her, knowing her frail emotional state.
DURING all this time, my cousin Sheila — with her family, sister and brother in KL — manages all the medical admin, and is the first point of contact for anything to do with Mum and her care. Sheila and her sister, Aggie, make arrangements for medication, diapers, drink supplements, and visit Mum weekly, if not more often. They talk to the doctors keep me posted. Matthew, Sheila’s elder brother, visits as often as he can and phones me in Sydney to also report back. These are the children of Aunty Ivy, Mum’s baby sister. Knowing Aunty Ivy’s children are my representatives in KL gives me relief and some measure of peace. But the sadness is like the black bottom in a well you cannot see, constant. I am the absentee son, and it’s inescapable.
When I visit, Mum tells me, “I know Floby is here, but they won’t let me see her.” My aunty is there, Mum just doesn’t remember she’s seen her at breakfast. Mum doesn’t remember anything that has happened two minutes ago. Now it’s Mum and Floby. Sentul is falling like dominoes. Later, “Where’s Aunty Mai? I haven’t seen her in a long time. I think she doesn’t know where I’m staying now.” Aunty Mai is long gone, the eldest in the Emmanuel brood, who went first.
One occasion, I’m about to leave Sheila’s place to visit Mum. The guy at the home calls to say Mum needs to go to a hospital asap. I don’t want to wait forever for the ambulance. I’m about to call for a taxi. Sheila says it’s going to be a long day at the hospital. Have lunch first. I don’t know she’s making a phone call to her husband, Adtley, who’s at work. Just as I finish that quick lunch, Sheila’s husband turns up at the door. He has a people-mover and volunteers to go with me to the home and drive Mum to the hospital. The home doesn’t have a stretcher! Adtley steps in like a soldier. “William,” he says, “I can do it.” Another scene that’s forever imprinted in my memory: Adtley bends down to Mum’s bed, puts his arms under her and gently lifts her. Adtley is bigger than I am, and Mum’s neither small nor light. But Adtley cradles my mother in his arms, like he’s carrying a baby. I can’t believe what I’m seeing, but it’s happening. Mum is carried down the stairs and Adtley puts Mum on the back seat, belts her in. It’s the usual afternoon thunderstorm in KL. Lightning bursting like explosions, blinding sheets of rain, sides of roads already flooding. Day becomes night far too early.
On the way to Assunta Hospital, where Mum has given birth to me, I’m in the front passenger seat, my mother nudges my back. I turn so I can see her. Mum just points to Adtley. She says, “That’s Adtley. He’s a good man.”
Mum is admitted, treated and discharged. At the home, Mum’s condition worsens, and medical scares become near misses. We move Mum out of the old folks home and into a nursing home, with doctors on hand round the clock. As it turns out, Aunty Floby has already been moved there, because she has deteriorated faster than Mum. As the days pass, Mum doesn’t even know I have just visited the day before. “What took you so long?” “What do you mean ‘Sydney’? Oh. When did you go?” “Where are Helen and the kids?”
She doesn’t know what happened yesterday, but she remembers her career at The Straits Times like it’s a week ago. I only have to prompt her and all the stories come out. She remembers so many names — Thavaneswaran, Tan Sri Lee Siew Yee, Dr Noordin Sopiee, PC Shivadas, Mr Holloway, Arlington Kennard, Mrs Kennard, Marina Mahathir, Hannah Abisheganaden.
Mum takes to singing for the other people in the new home. She sings old Malay folk songs mostly. The nurses and doctors love her and turn her singing into special occasions for everybody, serving tea and cake. Mum seems to know all the stories behind each patient. I have no idea what’s real or what’s not, but the patients around her seem to treat her as an elder, and not because of age. They smile at me, wistful. I am likely the most regular family visitor, and it feels as if they rarely see anybody.
Every day, by her bed, I thank God that Mum doesn’t even understand her condition is worsening, or where she is, or why. One day, Mum is a woman who has held her own, carved her way for so long, moved from young woman to working girl, wife, mother, widow, single-mother. In a flash, Mum has to have her hands tied down with cloth, because she cannot keep herself from scratching and tearing her skin. It’s the worst thing to see. Mum, confined to bed, tied down. No matter how soft the cloth (it’s flannel), thing is, Mum’s tied down to her bed. Often, she isn’t aware of the tie-down, moves her arm to emphasise something, or point, and is yanked back to a reality that just doesn’t dawn. A frustration shows momentarily, quickly to be forgotten, anxiety roosts just below the surface. More and more, she needs to sleep. Lethargy from medication, bone weariness, the Chinese call it ‘sour bones’.
It’s some time in April, 2015. With all the emergencies swirling in my mind, watching nurses look for veins that just won’t co-operate, seeing the incisions that won’t heal and dry, watching Mum’s entire life brought down to what is little more than an existence in the world of a hospital bed, the general fading-away that cannot be stopped, I take myself to Cheras, to visit Uncle Joe and Aunty Florence, to tell Mum’s brother the whole story and try not to break his heart as well. How his sister is just hanging in there, eating very little.
Aunty Florence sees through the situation, my helplessness in the face of what can only be described as Mum’s dying. She tells me of a news story she recently saw, about a law that would allow me to tell the medical facility not to intervene in a medical emergency, not to revive Mum. “I kept a cutting for you to read.” Bless your soul, Aunty. I read the article in their Cheras home. The term is ‘Do Not Resuscitate’. I don’t make any decision in their presence, but I know what I am going to do.
BEING the one person to make the decision is the loneliest thing. I see no option to legally instructing the nursing home not to intervene if intervention comes to bodily pain that also degrades life. I must let go of my mother. Let Mum die. Added to this is knowing that, when a decision on Mum’s treatment has to made at the 11th hour, when Mum’s condition most needs a judgment call, I am simply not there. Of course, I call Helen in Sydney. When I tell my wife, there is a silent pause, and Helen says, “Yah, I think you should do that. It’s alright, nee. You’re doing the right thing.” That night, I remember lying in my bed in Sheila’s home, lights out, a few drinks in me, wishing I could just cry, sob, scream. I wish I were in Backyard, getting drunk with the publican, Jerry Chong, one of my best friends, the head prefect, when I was deputy, through Forms One to Three. Jerry and I played guitar for the Youth Choir in church. Lots of stories. He would know what to do. Send me to oblivion. Instead, I begin a conversation with the dead. I talk to Errol. It’s late at night, lights are off, a sliver of sky through a corner in the window, lying flat in bad, hands folded on my belly, talking to my dead brother. About Do Not Resuscitate.
Next day, I call for a meeting with the staff nurse and the nursing home manager. We are in their boardroom, long oval table, swivel armchairs, silence compared to the nursing home bustle outside. I ask them about this document. They all know me. They have seen me pray with Mum, hold her hand as we talk, joke with her as much as I can, kiss her on the forehead before I leave, and kiss her again, and again, because she keeps asking why I have to go, just as I am walking away, and I have to return to her bedside. Every time I visit. The haunting continues. I’m also the son who leaves his mother about 30 years after she gives birth to him, and goes to live in another country. They listen as I say that when her body endures life-threatening episodes, resuscitation often causes more damage. Wounds from incisions that don’t heal. Mum is legally entitled to a better quality of life, even if it means letting her go, in Malaysia. I am grateful because I won’t see her fight anymore, returning from the ring lesser and lesser and worse, every time. I am her legal guardian. I’m also talking of a lady who sings during afternoon tea for everybody living and working on her nursing home floor. Someone decides to move beyond sentimentality and into closure, and says, yes, the law may be applied in this situation and all I need do is sign a simple, legal document.
Deed done, I drive back to Sheila’s house, resolving on the way not to discuss this with any of Mum’s siblings, or the aunties and uncles who are her in-laws. I know with the certainty of another rock in my heart that this is the only humane thing I can do for Margarita de Cruz, and that they will be shocked and hurt if I tell them. For Catholics, it’s probably a sin.
One day, I say to Mum, don’t worry about me, I’m ok, I’ll be ok. Helen looks after me well. The kids are fine. And Mum says, why are you telling me this? Just saying lah, I tell her. She looks at me, lying in her bed. Her right forefinger is gently crooked over her lip. That classic Mum pose when she asks a questions she already knows the answer to, and she’s just testing you. In no time at all, she’s forgotten what I’ve just said and tells me to bring her some kon-loh mee, which she simply calls wantan. She doesn’t realise that I bring in her favourite noodle almost every day, and often leave a bag of curry puffs for afternoon tea, enough for the staff and other patients.
One day, as I am about to leave, Mum says, “Lie down with me.” I freeze. I don’t know what to do. I feel all eyes on me. I hug very easily. Old friends, new friends, family. It comes naturally to me. But here, in a nursing home, Mum’s bed-rails latched up, in an open ward, I just can’t summon the strength. I distract Mum and talk about everything else. Kiss her one last time before I go, and leave, quickly, before she remembers. I will never forget that day, and my failure.
I CAN see it coming. Every time I fly back, I wonder if this is it. Mum’s deterioration worsens and worsens, to the point where she is twice admitted to a hospital in a short space of time. The second time is just two days after I have returned to Sydney from KL. Exhausted and emotionally drained, I say to myself, I’ll fly back in a few days. I just need some rest. Rest with Helen and the kids.
The next best thing I can think of is calling the doctor on call at the hospital. It’s not easy. It’s a public hospital and they’re run off their feet. When I finally make a connection, the doctor’s voice belongs to a young Malay woman, helpful, friendly. For a Malaysian, born and bred in this home country, my incompetency with the national language makes a phone conversation about my ailing mother’s condition very difficult. Her English is more competent than my Malay. She says, “Uncle, I know you have to travel from Sydney. Not easy lah. I understand.” She assures me Mum is OK. I keep pressing for some sort of detail. Silent scream in my heart. Precious small talk later, she says, “What can I say, uncle? She is at peace.”
Hindsight is unforgiving. When the final news comes, I look back and realise the young lady doctor was actually saying, Uncle, your mother is no longer in pain, I believe it’s a matter of time, days even, but I can’t tell you this is an emergency, please come to KL urgently. “She is at peace” means Mum is dying, and she could go any time now. I should have booked the next flight back to KL, because the one thing I most needed to do was be by my mother’s side when she dies.
It’s a Thursday evening in Sydney, 7 May 2015. About four days after I’ve returned from KL. I’m driving into the city, Helen by my side. We’re looking at a home in Surry Hills, to decide if we want to bid at the auction. It’s about 6.30, getting dark early. Helen answers my phone. As soon as she says, “Hey Sheila”, and slowly turns to look at me, I know. I just know. Helen listens for maybe 15 seconds, silent, barely nodding, and offers the phone to me. I whisper that I’ll call back. I pull up somewhere safe and legal. Make that call. I am already numb. Sheila breaks the news. “I think your mother was waiting for you, lah.” Mum’s gone.
Very late that night, I hear from Matthew. My cousin tells me he was with Mum up until the medical pronouncement. He was joined by Peggy, my cousin Tony’s wife. Both were with Mum in her final hours. Mum’s champions. Life’s like that. My Mother is gone. Saying Mum is at peace brings a special comfort, like a blanket to a body getting colder and colder, and yet sweating. I fly to KL the next day, arrive late at night, and go straight to the church, where Mum is already in a coffin, where Mum will stay for her wake and the funeral service. My last vision of Mum. In a coffin. In the last two years, I have seen two, for Errol and Aunty Floby. I hate coffins.
IT IS a full week before the last rites. Finding a Catholic church to hold a timely funeral service proves futile. All the churches with a direct link to my family’s Catholic history are unable to fit in a simple funeral service for my 86 year old mother. I call them all. I call on people who know people. To no avail. More than anything else, I am mortified for Mum.
Alice, my brother’s wife, comes to the rescue. Alice is a Eucharistic Minister, assisting with the parish priest in his duties. Alice knows Church people, priests, one of whom serves at St Ignatius Church in Petaling Jaya. The priest can perform the service. It’s a wait of a few days, and I accept.
Having confirmed a funeral date, I begin to pin down Mum’s resting place. I want to inter Mum’s remains with Dad’s, at St Francis Xavier Church in Petaling Jaya, but I am not allowed because of possible damage to the cement-wall structure that holds existing urns, the columbarium. They don’t budge despite my assuring them I will get a reputable contractor who will understand the job, be ultra careful. I can’t find a plot for Mum in the Cheras Catholic cemetery, where so many other family members have been buried. All calls for help hit a wall as unyielding as that columbarium. Then, I am reminded of the Methodist Centre. They have a complex that includes cemetery plots as well as a columbarium that is open to all. Subang Lutheran Garden. Errol rests here. It takes a couple of days and a very quick-responding, polite and helpful officer from the centre to finalise the place for Mum’s ashes, the carved stone marker, the inscription:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith
(2 Timothy 4:7)
Margarita de Cruz
‘Josy’
23 October 1929 — 7 May 2015
“In the sweet, by and by, we shall meet
on that beautiful shore.”
A day after I finalise everything with the Methodist centre, St Francis Xavier’s calls to say the church will, after all, allow me to inter Mum’s ashes with Dad’s. The choice is simple. When I needed my Catholic Church most, on behalf of my very Catholic Mum, Catholic bureaucracy closed the door on me. The Methodists came to my aid, willingly, unquestioningly. I walk. I stay with the Methodists for Mum’s final resting place, even though it is a good one hour’s drive from KL.
MUM lies in wait at St Ignatius for, I believe, four nights and five days. On the eve of Mum’s funeral, at the last wake prayers before the funeral, Uncle Joe delivers a beautiful farewell. I shake my head at myself for having forgotten to call him up to deliver his pre-planned speech at Mum’s 80th, and here he is, Uncle Joe, the natural patriarch to follow Dadda, holding emotion in check to speak of his sister. It’s a big crowd, spilling over from the wake room into the night corridor outside. The community singing of hymns and Mum’s favourites is powerful. It’s just like Sentul. That incredible singing. Mum’s people in one voice, traditional funeral hymns once again washing over, taking over, turning loss and mourning into love, belief, faith. I am my mother’s son. Mum’s last gift to me is a good abiding peace.
A few hours before, Aunty Beatrice walks into the wake room. I am the only one there. About 3pm, searing heat and blinding sunlight outside. Aunty B is the widowed wife of Mum’s kid brother, sports journalist and legend Francis Emmanuel. Aunty B is in a white sari, notes a guitar in the corner (it belongs to Brendan, Errol’s #2). Doesn’t take Aunty B long to say, “Sing for her lah. I know. Sing that song about that man with the white hair, in the mountain. She will like that song.” I pick up Bren’s guitar, and play and sing, Silver Haired Daddy of Mine. Aunty B knows better than most. Aunty B beams, thumbs up for me, I’ve got the song right. That afternoon, because everybody is coming for the final wake service at night, it’s Aunty B and me. And Mum’s farewell song. The music. Of course. A typical Sentul goodbye. Perfect. It can take just two, and we’ve said a beautiful goodbye. You can’t write this stuff.
I was a mess at the funeral mass and last rites the next morning. This is the eulogy I should have delivered.
“IT IS MY DUTY, as the son of Margarita de Cruz, Margarita Emmanuel, to share with you all an unshakeable truth. A good life, blessed, happy and very special, was lived by the woman you all know, now at rest and in the Presence of the Lord. Mum was full of love and she loved us all as only she knew how.
“Mum was dealt a very hard hand, early in life. Margarita was also ambitious and hard-working as a young woman, and these traits would have held Mum in good stead as she rode the storm that raged when, at age 36, she lost her husband and the father of her children, when he was only 37. Mum never played the victim. Her purpose was to bring comfort and happiness to those she loved. In so doing, she found fulfilment.
“And she loved Errol and I the most.
“Mum carried herself with a back of steel, and brought many pleasures to her loved ones, and those in her circles she saw as deserving a bit more help, understanding, empathy.
“I received the gift of music through Mum. Hers was the first singing voice I ever heard, because I remember her singing Babes in the Wood to me when I was a child. I imagine it’s not a lullaby most mothers would choose, because it is ultimately a sad, dark story. But it had a beautiful tune, and it would have lulled me to sleep. Mum was the first person to buy me a record, and she bought me many.
"Mum came from a family that celebrated with music. All of this opened the door to my being able to appreciate a wide range of music genres. That music is my own sustenance today is all down to Mum and Mum’s family.
“Dad taught Errol and I to read, write and count, well before we began schooling. Mum taught me to speak. How to speak, pronounce. Grammar. Before schools touched us. She had the most gentle way of correcting me if I spoke incorrectly. I believe Mum actively discouraged her parents and siblings from speaking to Errol and I in Malayalum because she wanted English to be our first language. My command of the language caught the eye of most of my teachers, and it didn’t take long before one teacher discovered I could also sing. I did well at school, and I sang at special occasions to cheering boys and teachers, because of the gifts that Mum and Dad gave me. I am fortunate today because I grew up around the example of a woman who was dealt a wicked, wicked misfortune, who then stood straight and strong in the face of it, her glass half-full.
Mum also taught me what to do when someone does what should not be done, especially from a position of power. Speak up. Firmly, politely, clearly. In a place like Sentul, and at a time when women were expected to simply follow, Mum, a single mother of two, would personally register her singular displeasure with our school principals and teachers, whenever she thought they had crossed the line when it came to the children under their authority, so to speak, and in their care. Margarita did not resile from pointing out their mistakes, and the teachers were always kinder to all of us students after their encounters with Mum. These lessons have guided me all through my life.
"Mum will remain as the kindest woman I have ever known, and I am blessed because Mum came to love and embrace the other kindest woman in my life, Helen, my wife, the mother of my children. Mum was blessed with eight grandchildren — I include here our first child, Christian, who lived only a few hours. They called her Nan, and they called her Grandma, and Mum brought to all our children, Alice’s and Errol’s, Helen’s and mine, an abundance of love and protection.
"I know I pale in comparison to Mum and her unquestioning love.
"Mum would also not have been the human being she was had it not been for her parents, brothers and sisters. The Emmanuels protected, comforted, loved and cared for Mum, and her two children, when Dad passed. And in the time of her fading away, when I would visit Mum at the nursing home, she would always ask me, Have you seen Joe? Have you seen Gilly? One by one, Mum would ask after her brothers and sisters, no longer aware some had passed on.
"And she would say, Please go and see them. On my behalf. “On my behalf.” You should know this.
"I always saw the woman behind the mother. Every once in a while, that look would cross Mum’s face, fleetingly, or I would see Mum gazing into the distance, and I would know, Mum looks lonely. Mum’s thinking of Dad. Eric. He must have been quite the character to have made Margarita love him. Because I know she did. Every time she said the name, Eric, I knew. Margarita loved Eric till her last breath. Margarita loved all of you. Mum loved all of us. Mum believed in good. Goodness drove Margarita all her life. Mum kept the faith. Mum ran the race of life in fine form.
"I leave you now with the words that Mum so often spoke to me.
'Mortals free from doubt and sorrow.
God provideth for the morrow.' "
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- My niece, Kathleen de Cruz, contributed anecdotes about Mum, and dutifully read a late draft of Mrs D to assist in the final edit of this chapter. The third of Errol’s four children, Kathleen worked as a stringer journalist for The Unreserved, The Malay Mail and The New Straits Times. She is now brand manager at Maybank Islamic.
- I will always be grateful to her mother, Alice, my brother’s wife, for all she did in looking after Mum in KL.
- My cousin, Marina Emmanuel, enhanced and restored some images with AI tools.
DEDICATION
This chapter is dedicated to Peggy Heng Tsu Chen, my wife’s sister, who interviewed my mother in Sydney, and in so doing revealed all I didn’t know about her. Dear Peggy spoke to Mum and recorded all she had to say on a cassette tape. She passed away on 13 November 2017.
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