I waited for an opportune moment to break the news. But when is it a good time to tell someone a member of the family has passed away? When is a good time to tell someone who has been struggling with life and has barely fought off death about the passing of another?
I thought of ways to say it without being too shocking or dramatic. The anxiety was eating me, and I had a hard time eating ad digesting dinner. I broke the news as I led mum out her room for a little walk around the ward.
"Mum, I have to tell you something about uncle..." Dad's older sister's husband.
Mum immediately panicked. Her eyes opened up wide, as if afraid of the bad news. "What's wrong with him? What is happening?"
"He left..." We Taiwanese are good with euphemisms, and nowhere throughout the conversation were the words "death" or "dead" ever mentioned.
Mum stood there and her shoulders sank. She closed her eyes and fought back tears. We walked in silence, heavy in thought. The silence was interrupted by a phone call from brother which I needed to pick up, for earlier he told me my nephew seems to have fallen ill and is having a bad case of diarrhoea...
I looked at mum throughout my conversation with brother. She looked so sad, so shaken by the news of my uncle's passing. I held her hand to comfort her.
"He was such a kind and good person..." I know, it's cliche to say something like this about the deceased, but in this case, it is very true. Mum was so shocked, because it all happened so fast. From diagnosis to treatment, to reoccurrence and to the cancer taking him away all within a year or so. My mind seems trapped and unable to forget when I saw him last year at brother's wedding, when he looked so lost and so tormented beyond speech after his first chemo session. And now he is gone.
"Your uncle and aunt had a beautiful relationship. Your aunt must be devastated..." It's true, they seemed to do everything together, and little has changed in their household ever since I have known them (thus since I was a little, little boy...). They would walk off to bed at night hand in hand. They would wake up every morning and go out and exercise together. They would cook together, sit in the study and read next to one another. Every time I visit them and stay over, you can expect the same routine, the same kind of stability between the two. And often I looked at their marriage, while all around me marriages were failing, and imagined that perhaps theirs is the exemplary one.
"He cared so much about me, and often wrote to me..." My uncle certainly did, and sometimes functioned as a sort of messenger because my aunt (his wife) has always looked down on my mum (for various reasons...). But my uncle never was drawn into that and always stayed neutral and could always give good advice and always had a kind word to say.
I don't know if the thought of her own fragility crossed her mind. I would imagine it must have... I patted her hand and said little. Though, appropriate or not, I did want to tell mum, using uncle's passing as an example, that she should really treasure life, especially after all the fighting she has done... Especially all the fighting she is still doing.
Mum agreed that I should travel to to the south of the country to pay my respects as early as tomorrow. It need not be said, but when my second aunt (dad's first younger sister) called earlier today crying, I was thinking the same thing. She was informing me and though unsaid, as the a member of the younger generation, it is expected that I go and pay my respects and visit my aunt and cousins to express my condolences, as well give a "white envelop"-- an amount of money that is traditionally given to the bereaving family when someone passes away.
I need to head down very soon, either tomorrow or the day after as brother seems to be too ill and needs more rest.
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