‘Edinburgh Granny’ (as we affectionately called her) was never averse in her later years of telling us of her travels in Malaya as a British Red Cross Nurse in WW2. I was always amazed at how she could recall her stories of those times in such great detail, and how she was able to make it feel so jarringly real whilst we sat in the comfort of her presence in Edinburgh.
A few years ago, she had asked me to play some traditional Scottish tunes and a piece of my choosing for her funeral; to honour her relationship with Malaya, I found an arrangement of the Malay/Indonesian folk song called Burung Kakak Tua by JunYi Chow, which translates as ‘The Cockatoo’.
A few weeks before her passing, we laughed and reminisced of the time where she came to watch my final piano recital at university in 2019, and we also listened to a recording of this particular piece. I didn’t provide any context to this other than it being an arrangement of a Malayan folk song, but she was beautifully peaceful and pretended to play along as she was tucked up in bed, so I know she would approve of this choice.
Forever, the one that played the piano x
Millie
23/05/2025
