The one where you see..

I was back in Malacca for the Cheng Beng prayers last weekend. A Chinese festival where family members pay respect to the dearly departed ancestors. The day started off early as we armed with food for offerings, joss-sticks and paper money made our way to the Jelutong Cemetary.

Year after year, it was the same..the older generation (my parents, aunty and uncles) will lay the food and paper arrangement on the tombstone, coupled with lighting the candles and joss-sticks while the younger ones namely my sister, cousin and I will be decorating the grounds with paper money gilded with silver and gold.

This went on to three other graves as we paid our respects. Shortly past noon, the temple was our final destination.

Just outside the Seck Kia Eenh temple, there was a sugarcane stall where an old couple was busy running those canes thru the ‘juicer’ filling up the orders of thirsty cutomers and also busily swatting the bees which were buzzing round them. I was one of them waiting and watching them. In between pouring and putting the ice and packing them in plastic bags, the wife went into a little tirade at how her husband had prepared the orders wrongly..

And I thought “Poor man, must be tough working with his wife, seems a bit of a bully”.
Just as that thought had left me..I saw next the wife swatting away a bee on her husband’s arm, before it got the chance to poke its’ stinger thru it.

The husband turned to his wife and smiled that tiny thank-you smile and went back to sieving the husk from the juice. That’s when I noticed the wrinkles around their eyes and mouth.

They must be a contented couple. I don’t get to see that often these days. That must be true love. Something, we younger folk are too impatient for.