Talkie Walkie IV- Amazing Grace

‘She attended every prayer meeting on time.’ ‘She always came with the home-made cakes and her beautiful smile.’ ‘She didn’t put her assigned task aside for the church even during her treatment for cancer.’ At the funeral her son, her close friends and the pastor narrated their memories of Cindy. Like a biography, it suddenly made me know more about this woman from Hong Kong. Cindy or Auntie Cindy was a little woman with the lovely mass of curls, a pair of black spectacles. This was the image I recollected upon receiving the ‘rouwkaart’ (funeral card). I even didn’t know she was called Mok Kiu Choy, in Chinese. She didn’t have a job, most of her activities and friends had to do with the Christian church. Every other Saturday she attended church with the students of Chinese Fellowship in Wageningen: the typical Cantonese soup, the walnut cakes or tea-flavored eggs, she always prepared some delicious food for the students. Every time she called me, she always ended the talk in a polite manner: ‘Sorry to bother you, thanks.’ According to the retrospect of a student, she always spoke in a somehow-hoarse and low voice with an innocent smile. But all these scenes and tastes, if they could be gathered, then could only be kept in their remembrance. Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind but now I see… When Amazing Grace rang out as the closing song for the funeral, most of the people could no longer hold in their tears. It’s the most appropriate footnote for her life: maybe there were not any remarkable feats to encapsulate her lifetime story, but it’s unusual to see people repeatedly use ‘always’ or ‘every time’ in their comments on the small favors this little woman ever did. The beauty of her amazing grace would be forever. Cindy, who died of intestinal cancer, is survived by her husband and three children.