THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT
During Singapore’s Hungry Ghost Month, a group of friends ventures into a graveyard after midnight. What begins as a reckless adventure becomes an unexpected encounter with grief, motherhood and the quiet ways in which those we have lost find their way back to us.
Circa 2014. Singapore. My second home.
I was back after having stayed in India for a few months to deliver my son and spend time with my now-deceased mom.
I had spent only a couple of weeks in her company after reaching Mumbai when she breathed her last in the ICU of a hospital.
The evening before, I remember telling her how much I loved her as I bade her goodbye for the day. I promised I would be back the next morning. The doctor had assured us that we could bring her home then.
She briefly nodded her tired head in acknowledgement.
Little did I know that fate had other plans.
Even now, after so many years have passed, I wish I had spent a little more time with her that evening. In those quiet moments when all I can hear is the whoosh of my own thoughts, I hear my voice saying, “I love you,” and see that tired nod in acquiescence.
And yet, in the darkest hours of the night, and sometimes in my dreams, I sense her. A presence, gentle and comforting, as though she never really left.
My mother passed away on 9 May 2013. My son was a little over two months old.
I had barely begun learning how to be a mother when I stopped having one.
Months later, I returned to Singapore with a newborn, without my mother, and with the memory of that last nod travelling everywhere with me.
I stayed at home until my son was a little over a year and a half old. Then I quickly found a job and dived headlong into work.
I had a wonderful nanny. She kept the house well and took very, very good care of my son.
At my new workplace, I met some wonderful people. Some were from India, others from elsewhere, and slowly I became part of a cohort of like-minded expats exploring Singapore and trying to make a home in it.
It was one evening, while we were having dinner at a local joint and tucking into rotis, subzi and dal, that one of my friends suggested we do something adventurous.
He was the one with the zaniest sense of humour, a crackling live wire.
We listened, nodding and smiling, not quite knowing what to expect. I remember leaving the conversation unfinished, waiting for the bill to arrive so we could pay and head home.
It felt like one of those plans friends keep making, hoping to act on them someday, but which never play out in reality.
My friend said, “Let’s take the bus and meet at a common point.” Some of us had cars, some were keen on taking cabs, and from there we would head to the graveyard.
“I know it isn’t locked. What can go wrong? It will be fun.”
My heart sank.
I was not the overly adventurous kind and definitely not a nocturnal one. I sat there hoping this was a joke.
A few of my Singaporean and Malaysian friends at the table were aghast.
“This is the month of the Hungry Ghost,” they said, a time when ancestors and wandering spirits are honoured. People burn joss paper and make offerings to the departed.
They would not hear of it.
We hopped onto a bus and rode along merrily, cracking jokes and taking pictures inside the SMRT bus. We got off at the last stop. I do not remember the place now, but it felt isolated. There were not many flashes from passing headlights, and a strange silence hung in the air.
We noticed a solitary cab coming towards us. An aunty was driving it, and the four of us piled into the car. She looked shocked when she heard the address, but she did not say much.
She dropped us at the entrance to the cemetery, where we waited for the others to join us.
Graveyards, to me, had always been scary places. I thought of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary and the cursed ground that brought back the dead all wrong. I thought of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, of the Count lying still in his coffin through the day, waiting for dark.
That was the only construct I had for a place like this, borrowed from books and movies. Coffins held the departed. Graveyards were their final resting places. The living had no business wandering through them in the dark, trampling upon their solitude and peace.
The iron gates were open. They creaked a little.
The moon shone brightly, lighting the path in front of us. We could see our shadows clearly. I was spooked beyond words. The only sounds were the crunch of gravel under our shoes, the occasional hoot of an owl, and our muffled, nervous laughter. The trees, silhouetted in the darkness, stood like silent sentinels, watching us pass.
There was a light breeze blowing.
A voice inside me kept saying, “Turn back and run. It is not too late. You are not inside the main graves section yet.”
A few of us were petrified. We walked with our arms interlocked. By then, I think we were a group of eight or ten.
And before I knew it, I saw rows and rows of graves, headstones and everything, shining in the dappled moonlight. The flowers around them glowed differently at night, and I thought, this is the moment I will pass out.
My knees were trembling. I prayed to every god I knew to teleport me that very instant to the safety of my home.
I spun around, my arms flailing wildly, let out a small cry of horror, and ran down the path towards the entrance. A few friends joined me. We stumbled through the gates, a mangled mess of nerves, sweat and shoes.
I had never heard my heart beat so loudly in my life.
We stood outside for a few minutes and waited for the rest to join us, every moment an agonising wait. They emerged about half an hour later. They had walked around a little more before it became spooky for them as well.
Outside, we began wondering how we would make our way home. There were so many of us and just one car.
Then we noticed the headlights of another car coming towards us.
We froze. Who would come to a graveyard at the witching hour? It was past midnight.
It was the cab. The same aunty had returned to make sure we were all right.
She had felt uneasy about leaving us there.
My friends and I split ourselves between the two cars and made our way home, our frayed nerves slowly calming.
I still think about that night and about the stranger who returned for us. She wore a blue shirt and grey pants, spectacles, and a blunt haircut.
One friend said he saw his grandmother in her. He had lost her only a few weeks earlier. Someone else said a guardian angel must have sent her back.
I saw my mother’s smile in her face.
The graveyard I had walked into was, in my mind, a place of endings: coffins, things that should stay buried. But it was there, of all places, that she found her way back to me.
When I reached home, I turned the key in my apartment door, flung it open, and then closed it as softly as I could. I tiptoed into my son’s room.
He was sleeping peacefully with the duvet pulled over him. The tail lights of a passing car briefly illuminated the room with a red glow.
I bent down and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. A daughter still learning to live without her mother, and a mother to a son, held together in that one kiss.
Molecularly Yours,
Sanjana
Curiously Irrepressible
First dreamer. Accidental chemist @ Green Molecule - Clean Confidently
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