Remembering 爷爷 (17.03.1934–20.11.2020)

(Expanded from my eulogy at his funeral—celebrating the life of David Ho Lim Cheng and his return to his Maker) 

My yea yea was nothing short of an excellent man. He was defined by a few unchanging values. Some of those values were all-important: for example, that all of life is lived to God's glory, that you use your might not to serve your own interests but to serve God and others, and finally, that you never stop serving, not even in old age. These were the values that yea yea held to strongly, and it determined how he spent his days. 

There were also those values that yea yea held to quite strongly but which were perhaps less serious: for example, you never give up an opportunity to eat oh chien, however many there are in front of you, you always bring your granddaughters to KFC when your son drops them off at your house, and, as became evident in the last few weeks, you never decline tau fu fah, not even if you are semi-conscious and bedridden.

Yea yea lived by his values, and it was apparent to those around him: such as those who listened to his preaching at Grace Methodist Church, those who sat under his and ma ma's Bible study every Tuesday, and those who ate the abundance of food from their table.

There were many things yea yea did which were less on display for everyone, but which I as his granddaughter was able to see and admire. And what a gift it has been to share in the life of such a remarkable man. These are three things I will remember him by.

First, yea yea loved tirelessly, through gifts and acts of service.

Every time we got exam results back, yea yea would trek around town, even in his old age, looking for a shop that would inscribe a pewter plate with “Congratulations, from Grandpa David” to celebrate our achievements. When I confirmed my plans to study law at uni, yea yea gave me some money to spend on whatever I wanted. I got a haul of books from Kinokuniya, and he signed the front pages of each one, his elegant script memorialising a message he never failed to live out: “Love, Grandpa David”. 

Towards the end of his life when he was still able to cook, yea yea would make us dinner every Thursday. His signature dish was mamak mee goreng! Sometimes he would also prepare an elaborate steamboat meal, and he would scour Kampung Simee market to get only the best ingredients for us. 

This is how yea yea loved—unrelenting, quiet service, that bared his tender heart without flamboyance. 

Second, yea yea never forgot the stories of his past, and listening to them has taught me to fully live and value every single day.

Yea yea was born in Falim, Ipoh to parents who owned a tin mine during the British occupation, and he was a child when the Japanese took over in 1941 and then surrendered in 1945. His father died from a stabbing during a robbery when he was a teenager. He remembered it vividly. 

Yea yea was a very good student and got to study at St Michael's Institution (indeed, there were so many candidates at the SMI entrance exam, that all he could think—in his words—was sei fo). He wanted to become a doctor but didn't have the funds to do so. Instead he got a scholarship to train as a teacher in the Kirkby Malayan Teachers' Training College in Merseyside, UK. He had plenty of stories to tell about how they would ditch the cafeteria whenever it served steak and kidney pie because it unbearably stank. He also had the most adorable impersonation of a Liverpool accent. But the most significant thing to happen during his time at Kirkby was meeting Judy Koh, my ma ma (嫲嫲). 

After getting his teaching diploma, he studied for a year in Shoreditch College of Education London (which is now Brunel University London), specialising in woodwork. He would take weekends off to go to Staines and Egham for day trips. He also had funky stories by which he and his listeners were endlessly amused, no matter how many times he told them. He went to Wales once, hitchhiking with his friends. He ended up in the car of a Cadbury factory manager, and got plenty of free chocolate as well as a free stay in his house. Seeing the twinkle in his eye as he told these stories, I imagined that, in his mind, his memories were animated like comic strips, intricate, hilarious, precious pieces of a fun story. 

When they returned to Malaysia, yea yea and ma ma married in Wesley Methodist Church Ipoh. They were both teachers. Yea yea was a founding teacher of Sekolah Tunku Abdul Rahman (STAR), which still stands today. He is still commemorated there. In fact, a teacher in my own school, decades later, was pleasantly surprised to find that two of his students were the granddaughters of the great Ho Lim Cheng. 

Yea yea and ma ma started a family and lived in KL for most of their life. Ma ma was teacher and eventually headmistress of Methodist Girls' Primary School in Brickfields, and yea yea was a lecturer in the Teachers' Training College. He also visited schools in remote places to evaluate teachers.

Yea yea and ma ma were living in KL on 13 May 1969 when the racial riots broke out. Yea yea was always persuaded that God saved him and ma ma from certain death that day, when they found themselves in a traffic jam, crawling toward a site of extreme violence. Somehow their car crossed the divider to the other side of the road in escape. He said it was miraculous, and he never thought otherwise.

Several years later, yea yea had to suffer the death of his son Patrick, who drowned in a lake in Wisconsin while he was a student at University of Wisconsin Madison. I do not know how he and ma ma survived that devastation. I am sure yea yea still lived with splinters of that loss until the very end. 

Then in 2007, he suffered the death of his wife, my ma ma, from pancreatic cancer. He has lived with that grief ever since then. He told me, a few months ago, that he would often dream of her. He would wake up with tears already in his eyes and then would look across the bed and find it empty. He is now, at last, with Uncle Patrick and ma ma, and I am sure it is nothing short of a blissful reunion.

There were many more stories in between these landmarks. Yea yea never forgot them, not even the most seemingly trivial details. This habit of recording and recalling continued to the invention of the mainstream digital camcorder! So when he went on holidays in the latter part of his life, he would film everything—yes, everything—because it was all precious to him.

I wonder how these memories played in his mind. Did he go through them continuously, so that the reels and reels of film would not fade? Did he select some to play at a time, whenever something in his day reminded him of something thirty years ago? I do not know. I only saw the outworking of it in his honest and grateful storytelling. That's something I’ll certainly remember him for.

Third, yea yea was a man of unwavering faith, especially in the face of death.

This started from very young, growing up as a member of Wesley Methodist Church Ipoh in the 1940s. Later in life he hand-carried the whole series of hardback Matthew Henry Bible commentaries back from the UK. They still sit in his bookshelf now, next to a giant magnifying glass he used to read them when his eyesight had deteriorated. He also went on to be the longest-serving Methodist lay preacher in the state of Perak: he renewed his preacher's license so many times they had to start recording his renewals on the back cover of his booklet beyond the printed lines.

All his life, yea yea heard the echoes of the perfect heaven he was made for. He enjoyed creation all around him, and was quietly fascinated—even captivated—by things that bored others. He kept arowana fish for a very long time. One of them lived for sixteen years. Every day he would feed them and watch them keenly, a faithful keeper. In his last house, he had a pond of koi fish, and up until he was too weak to do so, every day he would go out to buy fresh small fish for them to eat. He would drop them into the water and stand precariously over the pond to admire them. The slow, poised dignity of these beautiful fish were really what captured him. They captured him more—much more—than the yapping of a Labrador we once gave to him. I realise now how much this reflected his own quiet, contemplative nature, a man of few words. He didn't say much—he certainly rarely yapped on like a dog. But when he did speak, he offered pearls of wisdom, humour, recollections, and a heartfelt care.

He also loved plants. Once, he built from scratch a huge orchid stand that was the length of his garden. Pots of beautiful orchids hung from it, and he would take us to each one and explain how much he loved each colour. We would also pause briefly at the bougainvillea corner of his garden, when he would explain how he bred each one so that each flower would bloom with different-coloured petals. 

These were some sweet echoes of God's character as a Creator, that he heeded throughout his life. They were never short-lived obsessions. Yea yea was not one to pounce between different interests. Instead, he had a few steady passions and his devotion to them was lifelong. 

But all of these were echoes of a truer, sweeter sound of heaven that he looked forward to. On the hospital bed as he recovered from the first surgery on his stomach, he told me he often dreamt of what heaven might be like.

“I saw a beautiful river, the water sparkling, the clearest I’ve ever seen. There were fish in the water of species that I never imagined could exist: much more beautiful than koi. And across the river I saw trees and flowers that I had never seen before, they were so interesting, very beautiful. It was really paradise.” 

There in the hospital room, within those bland walls, I saw the most beautiful scenery I’d seen in my life, painted by his hoarse old voice. I smile when I think how much yea yea is enjoying this now. At last, he has followed “an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself”, the culmination of all the beauty he had steadily admired in his aquarium, in his flowerpots, and most of all in the face of Jesus, complete in the unhindered presence of his creator.

In my mind, yea yea has already been somewhat of a legend all along. If he wasn't already, he is now. He was a legendary man who was gentle, humble, and very much alive even in his final weeks. Eventually, tumours the size of tennis balls were lodged all over his torso, front and back. He couldn't even sit up without keeling over. So he just stayed in bed, peaceful and ready for whatever would come the next day. He would slurp his wat tan hor and tau fu fah every day, and my dad would take videos for us to see. In every video, my dad would say, “Is Jesus your Lord & Saviour?” The reply was a resolute, “yes”, as confident in his faith as I have always known him to be. 

Thank you, yea yea, for being a loving grandfather, a keen storyteller, and a brilliant shining light. We love you very much!

“But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds.” Psalm 73:28