What happened in the past week?

Let’s be honest here, I don’t expect people would ask me this kind of question, we content creators are people after all, and we have own lives to juggle around, meals to prep and cook, bills to pay, unfortunately circumstances and taking a short (and long ) break from the monotone work is just part of the process.  I personally don’t take very long breaks from my artwork, I always doddle on the go but this time is really different and the main reason why I took such an extensive break.

Just over Thursday night on the 5th June, I received a text message from my mom about my late grandmother was hospitalized after suffering from a stroke earlier in the day and no one noticed it until 5 hours later when my mom came back from work. I was told her condition was rather critical and given her existing health conditions, she would pass away at any time, therefore, I packed my bags and booked the first flight out from the city to visit her at the hospital just in case it would be the last time seeing her alive.

She was laying there in the ICU, bedridden and unable to speak yet responsive when asked if she could see any of us or wanting something to eat. I was silently grieving at the time knowing she won’t survive the whatever the doctors had to put her through given she can’t be anesthetised to remove the clot and my dad had decided to put her in a home as all of us are incapable of taking care of her in this state. I can’t imagine on her long term wellbeing in the event she was discharged and placed in the home, being incapacitated and helpless. Eventually my dad allowed us back to return our respective lives on Sunday. By the point, I made plans in my mind to video call grandma during mom’s future visits at the home.

I was told she was transferred to a normal ward by Monday.

She was still responsive by Monday evening when I was making steak dinner, even showing her the steak on the frying pan while she nods if she wanted to taste it when I come back from an extensive holiday. Tuesday however, she was rather unresponsive and was lying sleeping most of the time.

I woke up at 4 in the Wednesday morning for no reason.

Then approximately 4pm on the same day, I received a call from my dad, saying she had passed away.

I was shaken from the revelation; I hastily finished the rest of my work for the day, informed my management and boss and went home to buy the first train ticket leaving the city on the following day. By the time I got home the next day, the funeral wake was already set up and I paid my last respects.

I don’t want to bore you guys with every details of a Buddhist-Chinese funeral but the gist is the closest relatives of the deceased would have to sleep by the side in a sort of “letting the deceased spirit finding their way home” or “comforting the spirit”, Buddhist chanting and putting up her favourite meals as offerings. Therefore, I had to spent the night in a brightly lit and heat living room, no AC, a ceiling fan at fixed speed, a table fan (and the extension cord) with a short cord and the room was brightly lit whole day, hence I spent at least 3 sleepless nights while my parents slept in their respective rooms because they think I should stay back and spent more time with grandma, can’t say I blame them.

Despite the wake and procession took place over the 4 days, I found myself unable to master the mood to draw anything, even that I wanted to and there was no privacy given relatives and parents are moving around all the time and expected me to hang around at the wake.  

Then, the 5th day of the funeral and we performed an elaborate ceremony to send her off to the crematorium.

Things went into normalcy on the 6th day, I finally sketched out something (already posted on Twitter and Bluesky) and getting ready for the 7th day of the long funeral procession and return to full normalcy in the city when a sore throat struck at 5 in the morning.

At first I thought must be the food I ate or something but it was getting worse and worse, to a point it felt like eating a bunch of razor blades, even tilting my head downward would made it hurt. Ensuring the rapidly developing headache and general malaise, we head to the crematorium to retrieve the bones and perform another set of rituals to send my late grandma off to her final resting spot, all while trying to not to faint from the throbbing headache.

I was barely functional on that day after the final prayers and sleeping it off wasn’t an option as the headache kept me up despite the pain medication. Like all Asian moms, my mom told me I am just dehydrated and asked me to drink more fluids, it helps a little but it doesn’t stop me to have this feverish feeling.

Then, another sleepless night because of the feverish feeling, the body aches and the same dream repeated over and over. Woke up at 5 in the morning, get everything packed to return to the city, I took another covid test (it was tested negative the day before) and I was tested positive for the 2nd time in 3 years.

At least I am at my home base in the city, recovering from covid for the 2nd time for the past few days, I was sort of functional enough to finish off the sketch I made and at the time of writing the line was rather faint and slow to develop compared the days before where it was instant.

Looking back, I had spent the entire month of June doing absolutely nothing to content creating and spent the month, but whatever, I see my wellbeing and family values more important than chasing clout. With those things out of the way, I can finally focus back on content creation and hopefully more artwork in the future.