It happened many years back when your elder sister Ah Hui was still very small. You see back then, we were very poor, and me and your father both had to work to pay for the flat. Your Ah Gong would come over during the daytime to look after Ah Hui when we were not around. Maybe she cannot remember now, but Ah Hui loved your Ah Gong, he always took such good care of her, and would play "peek a boo" with her all the time.

Ah Gong wasn't very old, he was not even sixty that year. Your father was just 29 and Ah Gong was thirty years older. I'm not too sure how it happened, but one fine day he got hit by a car while trying to cross the road to our flat. He was in the ICU for three days, and all of our relatives came over and said many prayers for him at the temple but in the end there was nothing the doctors could do.

We didn't have much, but we gave him a big Chinese funeral. Everyone chipped in as much as they could. We burnt him one of the biggest houses that the temple sold, and we all walked the full mile behind his coffin to the cemetery. I never realised how big your father's family was until that day, there were at least a two hundred people there when the coffin was lowered into the grave.

A week later I was sitting at home playing with Ah Hui in my bedroom. It was just me and her, your father had to go to another country for a business trip. It was very late at night already but she didn't want to sleep. Suddenly she sat up and looked at the open door and began to smile. I looked over but I couldn't see anything, when I looked at her again she laughed and started clapping. She kept looking at the doorway like she could see something but there wasn't anything there. It was so strange and scary, I quickly went and closed the door and when I turned around she was already sleeping.

Your father tried to explain to Ah Hui about Ah Gong having passed on a few days later when he came back from overseas, we didn't know how to tell her, since she was so young. In the end we told her that Ah Gong would not be around for awhile, but she just gave that smile again and said,

"Gong gong tell me 'ready, he say he going somewhere and he not coming back, he also tell me must be guai and listen to mummy."