The Void Deck

I remember the exact moment that the void deck at my HDB block became coloured by my grief. The 4 of us were sitting on the tiled bench at the void deck waiting for the taxi that would take us to Larry’s doctor’s appointment. I was holding Georgia, then just one year and one day old. We had chosen to receive news about Larry’s scans a day after Georgia’s first birthday so that we could celebrate her birthday in peace, though ‘peace’ was euphemistic. Larry had been experiencing more headaches and pain, and a scope at the doctor’s office picked up worrying signs that the tumour had spread, and grown. It seemed the tumour was pushing against his eye - the eye he looked through a viewfinder with - and his skull base. We just didn’t know the full extent of the tumour growth, which was what the scans would tell us a day after Georgia’s birthday. You know what they say about ignorance, except our ignorance was feigned, and any bliss we felt came between waves of fear that was hard to ignore.

Waiting for the taxi, those waves started rushing to shore. I stared at the empty void deck - where Hannah learnt to ride a two-wheel bicycle, where we had scooter races, where Georgia toddled around in onesies buttoned over her diaper, where they’ve fallen and gotten back up - and it struck me that this space below our block that holds so many memories of our family growing together, may one day also be where Larry’s wake is held. I blinked away tears and images of his void deck funeral. From that moment on, the void deck went from being the ground floor of a HDB block, a communal space, to where my husband’s final send off might be.

2.5 years later, in the void deck that seems untouched by time, I walked abreast a funeral director, half listening to him explain the layout of my husband’s wake. We’ll face this way…the same direction we run in for our family races. The casket will be here…the halfway point of our race circuit where we go around the last pillar and sprint towards the finish line. This time, blinking didn’t work.

For 2 nights, the void deck filled with the voices and laughter of people who’d crossed paths with Larry. Larry’s death brought people together, some of whom hadn’t met each other for years. It moved me to see so many people show up to celebrate Larry’s life. I was a bereaved wife with no time to grieve, and in some ways I was relieved. Every time I approached the void deck, I erected a dam around me. I thanked, I listened, I shared, I comforted, I laughed, I bowed and I circumambulated. The floodgates trembled but contained my swollen grief. I was throwing Larry’s last big hurrah, albeit with Buddhist chants in the background instead of his favourite songs. I wish I played his favourite songs.

As swiftly as the void deck was transformed into a Buddhist wake, so was it restored to normalcy. The morning after Larry’s cremation, there were no signs of there ever having been my husband’s body in a casket at the void deck at all except for marks left behind by tape that held the faux carpet beneath the casket in place - a detail that surely no one else noticed. Grief colours the world in ways that are invisible to everybody except the griever.

This year, as Georgia’s fourth birthday approached, I found my thoughts drifting to her first birthday, and the void deck. Welcoming her fourth birthday was a simultaneously joyful and melancholic affair, an amalgamation of feelings I’ve become familiar with in grief. Unexpectedly, she asked to race with Hannah on their scooters at the void deck a day before her birthday. She’s finally comfortable and competent enough on the scooter that Larry bought secondhand for Hannah six years ago. It would’ve pleased him to see Georgia learn to ride it. He would’ve raced with them and shown Georgia how to navigate the turn at that last pillar, while I sat on the tiled bench at the void deck, watching.

That night at bedtime, I hugged and told Georgia, “I love you so much, and happy birthday!” For good measure, I added, “Papa loves you so much and wishes you a happy birthday too!”

“He has been waiting for my birthday,” she responded.

My eyes widened at her unexpected reply. “Really? How do you know?”

“My heart knows, because he’s in my heart,” she said, most matter-of-factly.

“That’s so cool that you can talk to him like that,” I said with genuine envy, and then asked, “is he always there?”

She brought her chin to her chest and in a soft whisper, asked, “Papa, are you always there?” “Yes,” she reported, looking back up at me.

While my grieving brain replays old scenes and imagines ‘would have’s, my newly 4-year-old daughter teaches me to listen to my heart.