Sunday, May 25, 2008

How my 17th generation grandfather saved my dad from death at birth

I always remembered this story that my dad used to tell Shuh Jen and me during one of the nights when we were at our first HDB 5-room point block flat at Blk 13, Teck Whye Lane, #25-210 or 210Z before Michelle and John was born. Michelle was conceived there.

His mum was very weak throughout her pregnancy, because the family was poor and she was was undernourished. After her delivery in winter, she was weakened and the baby (my dad) was also feeble, and soon after they couldn't detect the heartbeat of my dad, and he was given up for dead and they were preparing a funeral to bury him. (probably half alive)

Just then, his grandfather, who was a Chinese medicine man or sinseh, returned from a journey and found out what happened and quickly ordered that they boiled water immediately, put it in a bottle, roll it with cloth, and let me dad hugged it and covered him with more cloth.

After a while, he was resuscitated and then could detect the baby's weak pulse. That was how his life was saved. And he always has the life size original painted scroll of this grandfather, our 17th generation patriarch, framed up and hung on our wall when we were living in Teck Whye, as opposed to hanging up his late father's pic. We called him "Tai Kung", which is great grandfather.

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