Name: Kwok Chun Tung, Tony

Student Number: 50333331

E-mail Address: 50333331@student.cityu.edu.hk

Tutorial Group: EN2702-T04

EN2702-Understanding & Producing Written English

Descriptive Essay

The Grave

          The sky is grey. The sun does not look as brightly as usual. It is completely silent. Everything keeps its mouth shut and speaks nothing: birds do not sing and dogs do not bark. I cannot even hear any whispering. I can hear nothing but the sound of my footsteps. They are getting heavier and heavier while I descend the stairs. It seems that when I walk one step closer, the other leg is more and more difficult to lift up. After stepping down the stairs, I walk on a long, narrow path. And then I arrive there - the grave of my grandmother.

          I look at it without speaking. Again, the grave is grey, a rock of about a metre tall. On it has carved her name and the dates of her birth and death. At the middle top of the grave, there is a black-and-white portrait of her. She wears a traditional Chinese long gown with a jade necklace on her neck. She looks so young in the photo that I cannot find any wrinkles on her forehead. Her hair is slightly curled with a ribbon hairclip in the front. Her appearance is so different from what I know about my grandmother. However, one thing has not changed - her smile. I guess she wears cherry red lipstick on her mouth, and is smiling in the portrait.

          I put the bunch of flowers which I brought along into the vase and take a cloth out to wipe the grave clean. When wiping, I can feel with my hands that every part of it is very cool. The rough surface of the grave scraps the skin of my hands when I am cleaning. Then, I wipe the portrait with much care. It does not hurt me anymore. As it is made of marble, it is so smooth. I can now look at it more clearly. It seems that she is smiling at me and we can even communicate with each other through our eyes. I know she is asking me, "how are you?" and telling me that "she is fine". Just then, I sit down in front of her icy cool grave, close my eyes, and think of what my grandmother has done for me.

          When I was still very young, my grandmother treated me very well. When she visited me, she had to bring along bags of toys and new clothes with her. Every time when I knew she had come and opened the door for her, I saw big drops of sweat on her rugged forehead, and she was holding several big, heavy bags in both her left and right hands. When she touched me with her dishpan hands, I could feel that her hands were so rough, dry and scaly. Those bags had made her hands red and painful. However, it seemed to me that it was nothing to her. I remember I could receive a red packet from her every time she met me. The money inside was not a huge amount, but I could feel the warmth and love behind the coin.

          The moment which has impressed me most was the last time I saw her. She was in a bed in the hospital, without bags of toys, new clothes and red packets. The pungent smell in the room was just like the smell in pharmacy; no one liked to smell. Uniforms of doctors and nurses, the wall of the ward, pyjamas, pillows and blankets - all the things I could see were white. I saw my dearest grandma sleeping in a white bed, and I wanted to wake her up. However, she had no response. I looked at her creased hands, but they were not red at all. I touched her, and she was so cold. She looked pale and white, as white as snow in freezing winter. At that moment, I could only see the body of her, but without her smile and care. No longer could she hug me, nor could she make me laugh. Then my mother told me that she had passed away peacefully. I could only hear the beeping sound of those cool machines, and the crying sound of my relatives. I saw everybody was crying and I dissolved in tears.

     I sit closer to the grave now. It seems that my grandmother is hugging me. As I remember, there were not so many times for her to hug me. But she would smile at me, ask me the same questions every time when she hugged me, "Will you take care of me when you grow up? Will you buy a house for me to live?" Certainly I would say "yes", but actually I had no concept of earning money at that moment. I was just a little kid.

           I open my eyes and my tears start to drop. The sky is grey, even greyer than before. I stand up and stare at my grandmother's photo again before leaving. I wipe up my tears and walk back to the long, narrow path without looking back.