Bowyer Block, Singapore General Hospital. At this point in time, I know it was part of the original SGH that was built in 1926 A couple of years ago it was declared a national monument, only fitting given it’s history and its neoclassical style and distinctive clock tower. Today is has been converted into the hospital’s own museum.
I knew it best in 1971, for two months between September and November. It was during those two months that my mother was warded for illness which they couldn’t specify, although they had their theories. I remember the long walk to the bus stop, then the ride to the hospital, and then the long walk to the ward from the bus terminus. I remember sickly green walls, I think, overhead lights, linoleum floors, sounds of coughing, conversations in different languages, nurses and kindly looking ayahs mopping the floors. The smell is hard to describe, antiseptic, kind of a depressing smell, but not a stink. Just a smell I came to associate with illness and sadness, because every day I’d smell it when I visited my mother in her ward during visiting hours from 5pm to 7pm.
I remember the food they’d serve patients for dinner. Mum had Western, so there was always mashed potato, boiled carrots and cabbage, sickly-looking chicken or meat smothered in a sickly looking sauce of indeterminate origins.
I remember my nine-year-old heart feeling like a heavy stone in my chest each day as I tiptoed toward her bed with my elder sister; and feeling like I would die from missing her each time I kissed her goodbye at 7pm. The long trek home and the gathering dusk only intensified my terror and sadness. There is something about dusk – the symbolism is obvious, the light is going out of another day. But it’s in the details – the coming darkness and its shadows, the lights seen through windows, the street light high up and dimmed by the halo of crazily flying insects doomed to a quick death, lush green trees suddenly turning black and full of menace.
Another night without Mummy by my side in bed, without the blanket of her love and gentle breathing. Another night and another day to get through, filled with the silent and unspoken fears of a worried child – had I done my homework, would I get into trouble, what if I had no money? What if I missed the bus and couldn’t come home? Now I see that they were the manifestations of a much deeper and more permanent fear.
During those two months before my mother died in November 1971, there was often a record playing when we reached home. It was Skeeter Davis, a popular American country and western Singapore who’s voice was tender and plaintive, and carried pain in every note. The song I most often heard as we walked into our high-ceilinged hall with the bright fluorescent light was entitled Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep...based on a child’s bedtime prayer.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
The words filled me with pain. And again, this song came to be a part of the whole experience of losing my mother – first to a lengthy stay in hospital, away from us, and then permanently. To this day, I cannot listen to this album because everything – everything – coming back and I am once more that 9 year old girl wondering why her world has come crashing down around her.