What the Dead Leave Behind

I finished Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory thinking about the characters and people in my life. Johnny Lim, Snow Soong, Peter Wormwood and Mamoru Kunichika had occupied far too much space in my head by the time I finished the novel. I was thinking about my family too. My parents, my grandparents and, eventually, my ancestors.

One idea keeps getting emphasised throughout the book: death erases all traces, all memories of lives that once existed, completely and forever. Different characters in the book express it in different ways. Jasper heard it from his father, Johnny. Johnny most probably heard it from his wife, Snow. Snow writes about it in her diary, and Peter repeats it in his own narrative.

I honestly think it is not that simple. I don’t think death erases everything. It leaves fragments: what we can see, hear or touch. Photographs, diaries, houses, objects, newspaper reports, rumours and memories. All these things survive long after someone is gone. The problem is that each object is just a fragment. It is not the same thing as a person.

The novel gives us three narrators trying to understand Johnny Lim through their unique perspectives. Jasper sees his father through his research, family history and resentment. Snow sees her husband from inside a disconnected marriage that neither of them seems capable of fully inhabiting. Peter remembers Johnny from the distance of old age, guilt, friendship and secrets. Each of them is convinced they know something important about him, but none of them knows him completely.

In an interview included at the back of my copy, Tash Aw explains that Jasper, Snow and Peter project their own insecurities and aspirations onto Johnny. In the end, no one truly knows who Johnny was. He simply becomes a construction made from other people’s memories of him.

That idea made me think about the people in my own life. How much do I really know my parents? I know them as my parents, but who were they before I existed? Who were they before they met each other? What were their fears, disappointments and ambitions when they were growing up? What about my grandparents and my ancestors? I will never know any of these things, but eventually I learned about my ancestors through family stories, oral history, genealogy and scattered historical accounts.

Recently, I followed a long discussion on Facebook concerning two of my ancestors, Panglima Nakhoda Budin “Gerasi” and the anti-colonial fighter, Aji Apai Limpa. The accusation was about the practice of taking heads during the era of ngayau (head hunting). The discussion became increasingly tangled, moving through questions of warfare, adat (customary law), historical context and how acts committed in another century should be understood today.

Much of the discussion itself did not interest me. After a while, it seemed to become disagreement for the sake of disagreement. But it led me to this question: how much can any of us really know about people who died generations before we were born?

We certainly can learn about them through oral traditions, family accounts and colonial records. We can also learn about the social structure and adat that shaped their world. We can distinguish between warfare and murder, between the norms of an earlier society and modern legal categories.

We must keep in mind that historical context and evidence are important before pronouncing any moral judgement. We don’t have the complete picture of the past, but that does not mean every interpretation is equally convincing.

At the same time, The Harmony Silk Factory reminded me how easily we construct people from fragments. As a direct descendant of Budin and Aji, I naturally want my ancestors to be honourable. But I also recognise that family pride can shape the way descendants interpret the past, just as assumptions, inherited stories and modern perspectives can shape other interpretations. A colonial official may interpret Iban warfare through assumptions formed somewhere in Great Britain. A modern reader may judge the actions of my ancestors entirely through twenty-first-century perspectives. Even the details of family stories can change depending on who tells them.

And I am not exempt from this. I have my own emotional investment in these people. They belong to my family history and I want to understand them fairly. Naturally, I feel offended when they are reduced to crude stories about violence or headhunting.

However, I don’t deny that family pride can also become a lens. Perhaps the best I can do is remain curious, keep asking questions, keep reading, keep learning from those who are qualified, understand the historical world in which these people lived and accept uncertainty where certainty no longer exists. And resist the temptation to put labels on complicated human beings.

I think that may be what affected me most about The Harmony Silk Factory. No character remains fixed once another person begins telling their story. In another person’s eyes, Johnny is a gangster, husband, father, businessman, survivor, traitor, protector and coward. Snow is a wife, daughter, lover, diarist, observer and intellectual. Peter has his own secrets. Mamoru writes a memoir that totally ignores his involvement with the Kempeitai and turns his experience in Malaya into something pleasant. Everyone constructs a version of the past they can live with.

And maybe we all do this too. We remember our parents according to how they treated us. We remember our ancestors through genealogies and stories that survived because someone considered them worth telling. But what about everything that disappeared? Who did they love? What frightened them? What did they regret? What things did they enjoy doing?

History often preserves the dramatic things like wars, migrations, marriages and conflicts. But a human life is mostly made from ordinary things. We inherit what survives and build a person from it because traces do remain. It’s melancholy and oddly beautiful too.

One day, the same thing will happen to us. Our children, descendants, friends may inherit photographs, social media posts, messages, objects we once touched and stories told by people who knew us. They will construct us from those fragments. They may get some things right or wrong. But we will no longer be around to correct them. That’s what The Harmony Silk Factory ultimately left me thinking about. We spend our lives trying to understand the dead from what they left behind while slowly becoming the fragments from which somebody else will one day try to understand us.

I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.

I Am the Keeper of Memories

I have always been known for my strong memory. Friends, family, and even casual acquaintances have commented on it over the years on how I can recall details from years, even decades ago, with a clarity that surprises them. It surprises me too because I always assumed everyone could remember past events with the same vividness. But that’s not true. Many of my ex-school friends barely remember incidents from our school life. I remember names too. When I look at past photos, even ones from decades ago, I can point out who is who. No, I don’t spend my time reminiscing or dwelling on the past. The details are just there, fresh in my mind, ready to be plucked whenever needed.

A photo with my school friends from 34 years ago. Many have become successful individuals in the community. One person has gone on to become the State Director of the Malaysia Public Works Department, and another, a pediatrician.

I don’t just remember past events. I remember the emotions and the atmosphere associated with those events. You could say that I’m a sensory person or someone with an eidetic memory because those vivid experiences still live within me. It could be anything—a song playing in the background, the scent of rain on warm pavement, the gentle breeze swaying the leaves, the color of the sky on a particular afternoon, or even the call of a lonesome nightbird that woke me up in the middle of the night when I was four.

Sometimes, it feels like a gift. It allows me to tell stories with depth and remember people and moments with an intimacy that others often lose to time.

Several months ago, my ex-schoolmate invited me into their chat group. I was delighted to reconnect with old friends I hadn’t spoken to in more than three decades. We talked about many past incidents, mostly funny moments from that time in our lives. I told stories as if they had just happened recently. Many friends come to me when they need to piece together an old memory, to recall things they’ve long since forgotten. In many ways, I have become the keeper of our shared histories.

However, it is not always easy to carry so much of the past. You might think nostalgia is a wistful feeling, but to me, it’s a lingering echo of what once was. Memories often return unbidden, resurfacing with the right song, a familiar scent, or a sudden shift in the wind. And sometimes, it feels like I am standing at the threshold of two worlds: one that has already been lived and one that I am trying to step into. Moving forward can be difficult when the past refuses to fade quietly.

I make art and write to make sense of it all. My poetry and art are more than just venues for self-expression—they are my way of processing, seeking closure. I have the habit of revisiting the same themes and emotions again and again until I have finally made peace with them. Only then can I move on, allowing the memory to rest. It is like closing a book. I don’t erase or discard these memories; they will always exist within me. They just no longer hold power over me.

Perhaps, through all of this, I am learning how to honor the past without being held captive by it. My memories shape the person I am, but they do not confine me. And maybe, in sharing these stories—putting words or images to what lingers—I can find a way to move forward without leaving anything behind.

The handwritten draft of this post.

Reflection | Where We Go When We Die—The Physics of Goodbye

Recently I came across an article in Futurism—The Science of Death: The Best Eulogy, According to a Physicist (Aaron Freeman). Yesterday, I wrote about my friend who passed away recently. I think it’s apt that I continue to write about death because, let’s face it, every living being on the face of this earth will someday face the vast unknown. We don’t talk enough about death, believing that by talking about it, we are somehow inviting it closer. But I’m not someone who shies away from reflecting on things that make most people uncomfortable.

Image source

As I reflect on Aaron Freeman’s words, I realize there is something both cruel and beautiful about loss. The way it strips us bare, leaving us searching for traces of someone who no longer walks this earth. But if the laws of the universe have taught us anything, we have learned that nothing truly disappears. The First Law of Thermodynamics teaches us that energy is never lost, only transformed. And maybe, just maybe, the ones we lost aren’t as far away as we think.

We are made of stardust.

Did you know that most of the elements in our bodies were forged in the hearts of stars, across billions of years and multiple star lifetimes? However, certain elements within us, such as the hydrogen flowing through our veins and the faint traces of lithium within us, could be as ancient as time itself—the remnants of the Big Bang. You and I, quite literally, are fragments of the universe, bound together by forces older than memory.

So when we grieve for an unbearable loss and feel the crushing weight of absence, perhaps we can take comfort in knowing that nothing is ever truly gone.

The ones we miss exist in a different form now. They are scattered across the cosmos, carried in rays of sunshine, drifting in the gentle breeze. The photons that once danced across their skin continue their journey through space. Their laughter still lingers around us, waiting to be felt by those who remember.

If we explain death by physics alone, the conservation of energy means that when we die, our energy disperses into heat, into the environment, and into the people we loved. We become part of those we left behind. We are reborn into new beings. As I think about this, I can’t help but wonder: what about ghosts and spirits? As a Christian, I believe in the existence of the soul, but does that differ from ghosts and spirits? I honestly have no answer.

Could it be that some parts of a person, let’s call it a consciousness or remnants of their memory—remain bound to the world even after the body is gone? Maybe. Some believe that energy, especially from those who have passed with unfinished business or intense emotions, leaves imprints of themselves that replay like a recording in places they once lived or loved.

Or maybe these spirits exist because we keep them alive. I don’t mean in a haunting way, but rather in the way we cling to the memory of love. It’s in the way we still feel them in certain moments and places, as if they never truly left. Maybe we sense their spirits around us because our own energies interact with their memory.

I won’t claim to know the answer. But I will say this, purely my opinion, of course: if spirits exist, if ghosts are real, then maybe they aren’t here to haunt us. Maybe they’re still here simply because they loved too deeply to leave completely. And they are everywhere around us: among the rustling leaves in the trees, in the blooming flowers, waiting, always waiting for us to recognize their presence when we need them most.

I like to think that when my time comes, I will not vanish. I will be among the stars, among the florets of dandelions, the dust on the palms of your hands, and the unseen energy beneath the fabric of existence. I will return to the ultrasound and infrasound, ultraviolet and infrared, beyond human hearing and sight. And if you ever look up at the night sky and feel something familiar in your heart, maybe that will be me. Not gone. Just less orderly.