April 28, 2010

Grandma died

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The details are scant, as I only found out second-hand through Darren. They say she was on painkillers and went peace­fully in the hos­pi­tal. It was her pain that scared me most; bet­ter to pass on than live with suf­fer­ing through can­cer and chemother­apy at her age, I always thought.

It brings me com­fort to know that Mina, her trusty and loyal maid, was there with her when she died. Also, to know my aunt will be able to go back home to a nor­mal life, instead of dot­ing on my grand­mother indef­i­nitely after giv­ing up her law prac­tice and leav­ing her hus­band and daugh­ter in Canada.

I called my dad, and he seems to be tak­ing it as well as I am. I learned all my Chinese idioms for death by lis­ten­ing to what he’d say in these sit­u­a­tions. One is some­thing like, “She’s passed her body”, which always sounded very spir­i­tual to me and plays on the Chinese belief that our spir­its pass from this world into an ances­tral realm. Another has some­thing to do with becom­ing “fra­grant” or the smell of incense. But when he asked if I knew, he said, “Did you hear that grandma went?”

I just hope my cousin Priscilla is alright. She’s a pint-sized woman (even by Asian stan­dards) who more than makes up for her small stature with a razor sharp tongue and wit, but she was the most ador­ing grand­child I’d ever met when it came to our ma ma.

All of grandma’s kids were already in Hong Kong to be with her1 — many of them fly­ing in from dif­fer­ent parts of Canada — which is a tes­ta­ment to how impor­tant she was. She was the uni­fy­ing force who tied the fam­ily together. Siblings would make peace with each other out of respect for her, and the peace has lasted.

I’m not sad. I was already sad when I was in Hong Kong last year, on the day I left her. Back then, I made my peace, never expect­ing to have the chance to see her again. Instead, I’m glad to have been able to let her know how much she meant to me (even though I wasn’t sure if she remem­bered, with the sever­ity of her Alzheimer’s), to hear her tell her story in her own words, and to cap­ture her voice and char­ac­ter on video.

When I see her smil­ing and hear her voice, I see an inno­cence about her I wasn’t used to see­ing. She was always a strong, classy lady.

  1. The excep­tions being my dad and Darren’s dad, who were fly­ing out yes­ter­day and next week respec­tively, until they heard the news. They’re chang­ing flight plans for the funeral. [↑]
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April 2, 2010

Graveyard of Aphids

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Thumbnail: Flowering cabbage

At some point, the flow­er­ing cab­bage plant Heather gave me started to shed. The top leaves remained sup­ple and fresh, while the bot­tom leaves would dry up and fall off. I couldn’t fig­ure out why. I liked the look any­way, to see this plant grow­ing out of the decay it cast around itself, so I didn’t worry too much.

I wasn’t used to hav­ing a plant that was so alive. It had a pun­gent smell, and I noticed a few insects on it here and there. I thought the insects were a good thing, cause that meant the plant was healthy enough to sup­port other life.

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December 24, 2009

Lye and Vinegar

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(Just like old times, eh?)

Tyler licks his lips until they’re gleam­ing wet. He takes Jack’s hands and KISSES the back of it.

I fig­ured it out.

I had too much want.

The saliva shines in the shape of the kiss. Tyler pours a bit of the flaked lye onto Jack’s hand.

I started out self­lessly — doing with­out expect­ing, giv­ing not to receive, work­ing not for reward1 — because all I wanted was to live in the moment, to expe­ri­ence as much as I could while it lasted. Eventually, that turned into a desire, a belief that I couldn’t live with­out what (or whom) I wanted.

One could call it love.

The old me would have blamed myself for falling into that trap, but I’ve since rec­og­nized that I’m human. That I’m prone to falling, espe­cially when I’m so amorously intoxicated.

Jack’s whole body JERKS. Tyler holds tight to Jack’s hand and arm. Tears well in Jack’s eyes; his face tightens.

Now that I’m able to stand back and rec­og­nize my long­ing, and I can also see how much that long­ing that was start­ing to tear me down.

It’s like in Fight Club, when Tyler Durden is about to pour lye on Jack’s hand. Jack already knows he’s going to die; it’s an unde­ni­able real­ity we all come to real­ize as we grow out of child­hood, yet are rarely forced to deal with (or even embrace). For Jack, that real­ity doesn’t truly sink in until he’s faced with the chem­i­cal burn on his body.

Jack, snap­ping back, tries to jerk his hand away. Tyler keeps hold of it and their arms KNOCK UTENSILS off the table.

I was told it was over before it started, but that real­ity didn’t sink in until recently. It’s taken this long because I dared to dream of some­thing greater, and a large part of me didn’t want to give up the won­der­ful mem­o­ries. Unfortunately, those mem­o­ries are mixed and insep­a­ra­ble from every­thing else that’s been hold­ing me back. The fact that I think too much doesn’t help either.

At some point, I real­ized that I sim­ply had to let go. Truly let go.

Tyler finally says to Jack:

Listen, you can run water over your hand and make it worse or, look at me, or you can use vine­gar and neu­tral­ize the burn. First you have to give up, first you have to know — not fear — know — that some­day you’re gonna die.

I used to think I had lost some­thing spe­cial, but now I have no desires and noth­ing left to lose. It’s like I’m start­ing back where I was two years ago, which really wasn’t a bad place to be. The world is finally lucid and clear.

Now I know, and it feels like happiness.

Congratulations. You’re a step closer to hit­ting bottom.

  1. Readers of the Tao Te Ching will rec­og­nize this lan­guage. There’s so much of this Taoist idea of para­dox and con­tra­dic­tion in Fight Club. [↑]
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April 11, 2009

Protected: Flirting With Disconnection, Part 2

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March 20, 2009

A Different Kind of Understanding

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The doc­tor told us she has another 5–6 months. Her colon is so enlarged from the tumor that it’s thicker than her spine, and the pro­ce­dure was just a tem­po­rary solu­tion to pre­vent fur­ther blockages.

How strange it is to “know” how much time there is left. I guess that’s why they call it a dead­line. I had already assumed that this would going to be the last time I could see her, but that won’t make it any eas­ier when I have to leave.

I’m grate­ful to the peo­ple who have been send­ing me their regards. It’s a nice com­fort. One of the best pieces of advice came from Charlotte, who told me to “not leave any­thing at all unsaid to her…leave no ques­tions unan­swered, and to not with­hold any affec­tion you feel for her”.

I had come to Hong Kong with the inten­tion of telling my grandma how impor­tant she was to me. Finding the right words in Chinese to express exactly what I wanted to say.

But try­ing to speak with her has made me real­ize that she doesn’t care about any of that. She’s a very prac­ti­cal woman, almost to the point of tact­less­ness. For almost her entire life, mar­ried at 14 and as a sin­gle par­ent of seven kids, she’s had no time for words or feelings.

I’m here, and that’s how she under­stands how I feel.

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March 19, 2009

Here, Scared

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Grandma’s at the hos­pi­tal. She woke up this morn­ing with pain all over her body, but more severely in her lower abdomen. They quickly drove her to the doc­tor, and it turns out there’s been a block­age in her colon. This after­noon they per­formed a pro­ce­dure to expand the colon, and it went through with­out any com­pli­ca­tions. She’s rest­ing at the hos­pi­tal for the night, and my fam­ily is tak­ing shifts to stay with her.

I’ve been stuck at home all day. Everyone else has been at the hos­pi­tal and they decided to leave me behind. I’m on immune sup­press­ing med­ica­tions and the hos­pi­tal is full of germs; get­ting sick myself is the last thing I need, espe­cially when it means that I wouldn’t be able to see my grandma, as her immune sys­tem is even lower than mine right now. I would only be in the way if I was there anyway.

I’m scared. I’ve never dealt with any kind of sick­ness like this before. The only peo­ple in my fam­ily who have passed away were always far away in Hong Kong.

And now I’m here.

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March 15, 2009

Another Day With Grandma

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Grandma and her adopted son

My aunt tells me that my grand­mother is a very still sleeper. Sometimes she gets scared when they’re lying in bed together, because my grandma doesn’t seem to breathe or move at all. I find myself hop­ing that she goes this way, pain­lessly and peace­fully in her sleep.

But every morn­ing, when she slowly walks out from her bed­room, I’m relieved and happy that she’s with us another day.

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March 9, 2009

Death And Turbulence

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For some rea­son, I’m always seated by the wings of planes. It suits me fine, as I like to watch the dance of flaps as the pilots check their instru­ments and con­trols. It makes me think of how beau­ti­ful flight is, of what an accom­plish­ment of human­ity it is to get this giant con­trap­tion off the ground.

The cap­tain issues a word of cau­tion over the loud­speaker in his generic voice about cinch­ing up our seat belts because it’s going to be bumpy until we reach 20000 feet. Leaving at 1pm and arriv­ing at five in the after­noon, it remains day­light for the entire flight, as we’re chas­ing the sun around the hemisphere.

Flight infor­ma­tion flashes in pairs on the TV screens:

Ground speed: 857k/h. Time to des­ti­na­tion: 14h 12m.
Altitude: 8000km. Distance to des­ti­na­tion: 15289km.

The man next to me reads People mag­a­zine to take his mind off the sud­den drops in alti­tude. He clutches his ster­num every time the plane dips sud­denly, and fum­bles around for the vomit bag. Eventually, he set­tles his head on the upright tray.

Every shake and sud­den move­ment is a reminder of your mortality.

I used to be scared of tur­bu­lence. Now I can’t tell if I’m used to it, or the fact that I’m going to die some day.

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December 19, 2008

A Blogger Passes On

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Many years ago, I received an e-mail from a reader named Winston Rand, look­ing for some blog­ging advice:

Jeff,

I have been to your equiv­o­cal­ity site numer­ous times over the last cou­ple of months and always come away impressed. Having vis­ited many other “blogs” — God how I’ve come to hate that term — I keep com­ing back to yours as my gold stan­dard. Been think­ing of start­ing my own, even have 2 domain names paid for, but being an engi­neer and an IT pro, I’m too hes­i­tant to start until most of the answers are quite clear. That is a strength as well as a failing…

In my quest, I’ve looked at many dif­fer­ent blog­ging tools, host­ing sites, etc., and am still not sure which route to take. My temp­ta­tion is to say to hell with all of them and just post my stuff using sta­tic html pages (Dreamweaver) since I’m not really inter­ested in feed­back or com­ments that much. But I do like the abil­ity to eas­ily inte­grate cal­en­dar, archives, and other fea­tures that most of the blog pack­ages seem to include by default. And who knows, one of these days I may care what other peo­ple think of my work.

Among the pop­u­lar pack­ages, I’ve got it nar­rowed down to WordPress, Moveable Type, and SquareSpace, but I’m wide open to sug­ges­tions and recommendations.

Could you share your thoughts on what you use and rec­om­mend? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Keep up your excel­lent work! I look for­ward to see­ing more of it.

I steered Winston towards WordPress, and soon after, he started his own blog at nobodyasked.com. Over time, he devel­oped a sig­nif­i­cant read­er­ship, as he would write quite lucidly about pol­i­tics, humour, and the occas­sional geek talk.

Although our blogs cov­ered dif­fer­ent things in a dif­fer­ent style (Winston called it “[spin­ning] in a slightly off­set par­al­lel uni­verse” when describ­ing my blog in his one-year anniver­sary post), we would check up on each other now and then.

During one of my last vis­its, I found out that Winston has died after a 38-hour ill­ness and 3 surg­eries. While I never really knew him in per­son, I still feel like some­one close is gone.

And I wish I could explain why.

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May 6, 2008

Things I Learned At My First Western Funeral

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  • I still know the words to the Lord’s Prayer and Amazing Grace, thanks to my years at Catholic School and UCC
  • It’s not the words of the speaker that make us cry, it’s their own emo­tion. Therefore, humans are born with an innate sense of empathy.
  • Old peo­ple like to pick at their faces
  • The pas­tor may go on longer about their reli­gion, than the per­son who passed away and their faith. This is more to com­fort those in mourn­ing, than about hon­our­ing the mem­ory of the dead.
  • Knowing some­one for only a month before get­ting mar­ried can lead to over sixty years of mar­i­tal bliss
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January 27, 2008

An Unspoken Bond

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I met her a few times. She was nice. Quiet. I was one of the more junior stu­dents and she would occa­sion­ally give me words of encouragement.

But what endeared her to me was the way she inter­acted with him. A com­fort­able famil­iar­ity, an unspo­ken bond they never overtly dis­played in pub­lic but kept hid­den between them, a secret they shared as if to reveal it was to spoil it.

Sometimes, they’d talk about their kids. They were get­ting older. Getting mar­ried. Moving out.

When they found the can­cer in her body, he sus­pended classes imme­di­ately. He told us we could find new teach­ers with his bless­ing. I looked up their address and sent a bas­ket filled with pâté and dip­ping oils. That was over a year ago.

They buried her last Wednesday.

And as much as I’d like to do some­thing, any­thing to make him feel bet­ter — offer my con­do­lences, tell him he has an ear — there isn’t any­thing I can do. Nothing will make up for his loss.

Our bond will remain unspo­ken too.

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March 2, 2007

When I Die

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When I die, let there be no obit­u­ar­ies or announce­ments, for the ones who should know, would know.

Let there be a gath­er­ing instead of a funeral, where my friends can relax and speak what they wish.

Let the dress be casual, for no one should be any­thing but them­selves around me.

Let there be men­tion of my flaws, for there would be no truth or human­ity with­out them.

Let there be humour and laugh­ter, for I love these things in my life.

Let there be no reli­gious ser­vice, for my life has been devoid of religion.

Let there be as much cel­e­bra­tion of my life as there is mourn­ing that it has ended.

Let every­one have a copy of Turn On The Bright Lights by which to remem­ber me.

Let my ashes be scat­tered, for I hope to carve my name on hearts, not marble.

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September 14, 2005

Awakening: The Reborn Dreamer

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I wake up every day look­ing at Death, and you know what? He ain’t half bad.

—Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp

Its not until you lose every­thing that you are free to do anything.

—Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I used to take pride in the fact that I felt like I could die sat­is­fied any day. I was at a place in my life where I couldn’t ask for more, and there was a tremen­dous sense of over­all sat­is­fac­tion. I had every­thing that I deserved. After that, all I had left to expe­ri­ence, every fall morn­ing caught or tear shed, was a bonus. Of course, the clos­est I had ever come to death was a minor case of pneu­moth­o­rax, which I imag­ine is as fatal as pinch­ing one’s skin between two Lego pieces while build­ing the Death Star, so this feel­ing was never actu­ally put to the test. I’m sure I’d feel dif­fer­ently if I ever came fright­en­ingly close to the end of my life, although just how much remains a mystery.

Perhaps this grew from a cogent sense of frailty, per­pet­u­ated by all the sto­ries of freak acci­dents echoed through­out the media. The stu­dent who impaled his heart on a num­ber 2 pen­cil while try­ing to catch a foot­ball in the mid­dle of class. The gen­eral who drowned in a pool of his own blood from a nose­bleed on his wed­ding night. Even the pres­i­dent of the United States almost choked to death on a pret­zel. To dis­tance myself was the only way I could deal with it.

The prob­lem, I’ve only recently dis­cov­ered, was that this left me alien­ated and unat­tached. I have no dreams, noth­ing to live for. Not even a goal to work towards. During high-school, the goal was to get into a uni­ver­sity. After uni­ver­sity, the goal was to get a ful­fill­ing job. After the job was the house. Now that I own a house, it feels like the rest of my life has been laid out in front of me. No risks, no sur­prises. I appre­ci­ate every­thing that I’ve been given, but it feels like it’s been a lit­tle too easy. Even my most sig­nif­i­cant goal was rather sud­denly accom­plished this year. As Logan Pearsall Smith once wrote in his book Afterthoughts, “How many of our day­dreams would darken into night­mares if there seemed any dan­ger of their com­ing true!”. A simul­ta­ne­ous ful­fill­ment and dissatisfaction.

I pre­sented this prob­lem to Pat, and from his infi­nite wis­dom (at 24, no less) I real­ized that one should never live for what might hap­pen. Otherwise, a per­son would go crazy. Of course, to truly live this way, it doesn’t hurt to be a bit of a fatal­ist. Having this belief means that one can only do the best that they can, and to go means that it was meant to be.

For now, I’ve been keep­ing myself occu­pied, until I can fig­ure out what I want in the last rest of my life. Blessed is the per­son who is too busy to worry in the day­time and too sleepy to worry at night. It’s only now that I’ve dis­cov­ered that I need a few dreams to survive.

And I can only hope to never reach them.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer
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