Rich People Problems-Kwan 2017 (WWT)

As if reading his mind, Ah Ling came over and put her hand on his face. “Don’t look so
sad, Nicky. It’s not the end of the world.”
Suddenly, tears began to spring from his eyes uncontrollably. Ah Ling embraced him, in
the way she had so many times when he cried as a child, stroking the back of his head as
he wept quietly against her shoulder. Nick hadn’t shed a single tear during the entire
week of his grandmother’s funeral, and now he was letting it all out.
After he had recovered himself, Nick walked quietly next to Ah Ling along the wooded
pathway. When they reached the lily pond, they sat on the stone bench at the water’s
edge, watching a lone egret as it stepped gingerly among the shallow marshes looking for
little minnows. Nick asked, “Do you think you’ll stay in Singapore?”
“I think I will go back to China, for a year at least. I want to build a house in my old
village, and spend a little time with my family. My brothers are getting older, I have so
many new grandnephews and grandnieces who I have never met. Now I can finally be the
rich old auntie who spoils them.”
Nick chuckled at the thought. “I’m so glad Ah Ma provided for you in her will.”
“Your Ah Ma was very generous to me, and I will always be grateful to her. For the first
few decades I worked here, she frightened me to death. She was not the easiest woman to
please, but I think in the last twenty years or so, she came to see me as a friend and not
just a servant. Did I ever tell you that a few years ago she invited me to take a room in the
big house? She thought I was getting a bit old to be trudging back and forth from the
servants’ wing to the house. But I turned her down. I wouldn’t feel comfortable in one of
those grand bedrooms.”
Nick smiled, remaining silent.
“You know, Nicky, I really don’t think your grandmother wanted this house to go on
after she was gone. That’s why she prepared things the way she did. She wouldn’t have
taken care of me and Ah Ching and everyone else like she did. She thought of every
detail.”
“She may have thought of every detail, but for me, so many questions remain
unanswered. I keep beating myself up about how stubborn I was, refusing to come back
to make peace with her until the very end. I wasted so much time,” Nick lamented.
“We never know how much time any of us have. Your Ah Ma could have gone on living
for many more months, or even years, you never know. Don’t regret anything. You are
lucky you were back in time to say goodbye,” Ah Ling said soothingly.
“I know. I just wish I could talk to her again, to understand what she truly wanted,”
Nick said.
Ah Ling suddenly sat up on the bench. “Alamak! I’m getting so absentminded, I almost
forgot that I have a few things for you from your Ah Ma. Come, come to my room with
me.”
Nick followed Ah Ling to her quarters, where she produced an old imitation Samsonite
suitcase from the back of her closet. He recognized it as the suitcase she used when she
had gone back to China all those decades ago. Ah Ling opened the suitcase on the floor,