Uncle Eddie, Rocketman

Uncle Eddie Lim Seng Huat passed away this after­noon at a nurs­ing home in Serem­ban. I don’t know exactly how old he was, I think around 55. He was moved there from my grandmother’s house last week, and accord­ing to my cousin, was quite unhappy about it. Accord­ing to another aunt, he had refused food for the past few days. He couldn’t vent his frus­tra­tions by doing any­thing else except refus­ing to eat, because he’s been par­a­lyzed since suf­fer­ing a stroke last year.

Uncle Ah Huat was the most cru­elly ridiculed per­son in my mother’s fam­ily because of his intel­lec­tual impair­ment. In my mother’s fam­ily of 14 sib­lings, there were peo­ple with ade­quate com­pas­sion, but that could hardly have negated the hor­ri­ble treat­ment he received from the oth­ers who didn’t.

He used to roam the streets of Serem­ban. And I remem­ber from the time I was four years old, on fre­quent vis­its to Serem­ban, that I would be half ter­ri­fied of him because he would grab my hand and walk really quickly down the streets, shout­ing and rav­ing at any­one he rec­og­nized, and also at some that he didn’t.

He had a tran­sis­tor radio he would carry with him all the time, lis­ten­ing to BBC World Ser­vice, and then later repeat­ing every­thing he heard on the world news. I remem­ber buy­ing him a replace­ment many years ago when he was so list­less because his old one had broke.

He had a col­lec­tion of badges, pins and stick­ers from the Demo­c­ra­tic Action Party (DAP), for whom he ran errands dur­ing elec­tion cam­paigns, dis­trib­ut­ing fly­ers and ban­ners. He used to show off his col­lec­tion of “Rock­et” badges, which he called them, because of the DAP emblem. I remem­ber call­ing him Rock­et­man because of that.

I saw him a few years ago while stop­ping by Serem­ban on a drive to KL, and he was his usual effu­sive self after sev­eral min­utes of quiet dis­trust, owing to the num­ber of years between my vis­its. It was back to grab­bing my hand and run­ning through Serem­ban shout­ing at peo­ple after he had taken the time to warm up to me. I had free park­ing that day because he snatched my park­ing ticket, ran two blocks to my father’s fam­ily con­fec­tionery, asked for a hand­ful of bis­cuits, ran to the park­ing warden’s sta­tion, and with a big silly grin, asked very loudly to pay by biscuit.

Uncle Ah Huat, Rock­et­man. R.I.P.