CNY feels a bit distant this year; overall, it’s still going over the same routine but I came away feeling that there’s a little something missing. Maybe it’s the lack of festivities or perhaps age has finally caught up. In recent years, the festive cheers just isn’t as joyous as in the nineties or early noughties.

Traditionally a celebration of family ties, this year was no exception. But the celebratory mood has been toned down a couple notches. Unlike yesteryear where the adults catch up and relieve their younger days in the living room while the children played, things have mellowed.

As my Grandma is now bedridden, the gathering has shifted from the living room to the bedroom. She’s also not the lady she used to be; a sharp, iron-willed matriarch before, a shadow of her former self afflicted with dementia and immobility today. It’s heart-wrenching to see her memories fade as she no longer remembers most of our relatives visiting.

Children, too, grow up. With time and age, innocence gave way to defensive walls. I guess with people you meet once a year for barely hours, a sense of unfamiliarity quickly takes over. The ties that bind stem from a generation before ours and even those ties are unravelling with the passage of time. In fact, sometimes they seem more of strangers than some of our friends.

Truth be told, the excitement that CNY brings has unfortunately faded for me as the years passed. There are still aspects of the festive occasion I’ll always appreciate – stories of the good old days, the savoury (home-made) goodies, catching up with friends. But other than these, some of the customs feel more of an obligation and a sense of duty than heartfelt and sincere gestures.

The eldest in my extended family is a centenarian and the rest are not too far off in their 70s and 80s. I’m not too sure how long more it’ll be before these nodes that connect us fall away and the familial ties finally wilt. But until then, as much as some of these relationships are superficial, I’d still give them their due respect because to the older generation, they mean so much more.