One month.

He had become so much a part of my life without me realizing it. So when he suddenly disappeared, my eyes and heart searched longingly for a trace of that familiar shadow.

Grandpa Zhou had been hospitalized.

About a month ago, I got a phonecall, fraught with a sense of urgency, while I was at work. It was his voice. His leg had been hot and swollen and his clinic doctor had told him he needed to be sent to the hospital by ambulance.

Cellulitis, I thought. Or an abscess of the foot. He could no longer walk, much less travel daily to sing at the train station near my home. On the 7th of June, he was hospitalized.

I didn’t see or hear from him for an entire month. Then today, while at work going through the old medical notes of one of my patients who had come in for recurrent seizures, he called.

” I’ve finally returned home, Wai Jia.” Wo zhong yu hui jia le.

“What took you so long?” I replied, in mock exasperation, ” I missed you!”

“Me too,” he said. “Same here.”

I went to his home after work today. It was far away from my home but reasonably near my workplace.

“M?” I called M, a friend at church who had stopped for Grandpa Zhou after reading about my encounter with him on my church magazine and who had since become good friends with him as well. ” He’s home,” I said. “Grandpa Zhou is finally home.”

M was nearby and swung over to see him, buying him some groceries. M was together with a friend, and she was interested to go visit too. By the time I knocked off, weary and exhausted from tears and disappointment from an emotional, premenopausal day at work, it was late and they had left.

“He’s waiting for you at the void deck of his flat,” M texted me. Void decks- they’re what we call public spaces underneath subsidized public housing flats.

That white-haired silhouette in a musty-green cotton collared shirt stood out against a cream-colored wall. He looked up, our eyes met, and it was good. It was like the way things were.

I bought us both dinner. We like the same “poor-man’s” food- rice, vegetables and steamed egg. They were what he had requested for.

“When I was hospitalized, I told no one. Not my son, or my wife. I only called you.”

We talked. About his leg, his hospitalization, how he hasn’t sung in a month. About my new work, about my leaving for Myanmar to visit an orphanage this weekend, about my hope to enter a specialist track soon.

Looking through his bills, I realized, to my horror, how exorbitant his medical fees were. Ten days of hospitalization in a third class ward had amounted to more than $1600, all of which could thankfully be deducted from a joint personal- government fund, what we call Medisave. But his other fees added to about two hundred dollars.

In the hospital, doctors like myself order test after test for our patients, sometimes without even realizing it’s financial implication on patients. Did you know, a simple MRI scan of one’s foot costs almost a thousand dollars?

Ouch.

We went through all his receipts. I hadn’t much money with me so I needed to draw more cash. ” I’ll get some from the train station and bring it to your home upstairs,” I said. He was walking with a limp. His leg was still sore.

“No, “ he insisted. ” Come up to my place and see it- my son and daughter-in-law returned to throw my junk out for me. At least some of it. I was so angry and sad that day… When I found out they had accidentally thrown away the photos of us you gave me, and the shirt your father gave me…”

I was relieved. Three years ago when I visited him, his house was stacked front to back, from the ground to the ceiling, with bags and bags of trash- picked up goods and thrown away items which he had collected and hoarded over the years. Today, though there were still mountains and mountains of bags left behind, a little clearing in the living room, amidst a dank, musty smell, gave signs of hope.

“That was the yummiest dinner I had in a long time,” he said in mandarin. It was such a simple meal eaten from a styrofoam box.

As he walked me to the train station, we passed another busker, a middle-aged Indian man singing beautiful songs with a bright smile and a guitar.

I dropped a note into his guitar bag and thanked him for singing.

Suddenly, a thought came to me.

“Grandpa Zhou,” I said, “Here’re some coins. Why don’t you drop some money into his guitar bag?”

“No!” He stormed away from me. “I can’t! He’s the same as me!”

“So? What’s the matter?” I said. “Can’t you bless him too?”

There was a look of perplexity on his face. In the furrows of his eyebrows, I saw the tension of shame and embarrassment. I did so, because I wanted him to see, how he, too, could give. We were chatting, and he was sharing with me how all his life he had struggled to survive. I wanted him to know, that God had blessed him not only with enough for himself, but enough for others too.

Generosity, is the best way to experience abundance.

“He is like me! A BEGGAR!” he suddenly erupted, like a damned up champagne bottle, freshly popped.

“Who’s calling who a beggar?” I said. “You’re no beggar. You were my special guest at my party, a VIP, our entertainment for the night. Don’t you think he sings beautifully? Like you?”

He stopped for a bit, stunned.

Then he took my coins and dropped them into the guitar bag.

“God bless you!” said the Indian man, with a big bright white smile.

Grandpa Zhou walked away, with me trailing behind.

Today, right before we left, he told me, how he would have me be there on the day he would be baptized. He told me he would pray for my “eternal happiness” and my application to a specialty. He told me he would pray for me regarding my mission trip to Myanmar.

I told him I would pray for what he had asked me to pray for him about- his health, so he could return to singing again.

In spite of his discomfort, he had insisted on walking me to the train station.

As he turned back, I watched him limp home, his left hand lifting his pant leg as his left foot was probably smarting by then, his grey silhouette disappearing into the maddening crowd.

Suddenly, all those tears at work didn’t matter so much anymore.

Today is the 7th of July, a whole month from the day you called to say you had to be hospitalized. For a whole month, I hadn’t heard from you- you said you had no access to a phone at hospital and were putting up at your son’s place since your discharge and didn’t wish to inconvenience him.

I’ve missed you so much, Grandpa Zhou.

Get well soon, and we’ll see each other at your place for dinner again soon.