6 February

6 February

I dozed on and off since I got on the plane. So tired I am, exhausted after having only slept two hours (actually less...) last night.

I had a vigil... Lit a candle and places it before a picture of mum and dad. It was a picture taken professionally over a decade ago. I remember that day vividly, how we all met up after dad finished work and gathered at a nice steak restaurant. After dinner, we've me across this photography parlour, and as we were all dressed up that night, someone (was it mum or dad...?) suggested we take a family portrait together. It would be our only one. And at the same time, mum and dad took a picture, just the two of them, mum holding onto dad's arm.

I sat and meditated for a while before the little make-shift shrine. My friend dropped by, as he remembered the significance of the day, he wanted to be there, even though I was agitated and wanted more to be alone. In my mind I wondered what his intentions were, why he was even with me at such an intense and melancholic occasion when he could elsewhere... Why was he even spending time with me when often he just ends up crying as if I depress him and am the source of all the pain and unhappiness in the world... It's all so personal, the memories still all so fresh after five years.

As the clock ticked toward 2.21pm in Taiwan, I felt the memories return... All of us gathered at dad's bedside. Beeping of a heart monitor. Dad's breath heaving. Me kneeling by his bedside, holding his hand, his arm. Me whispering to him, reminding him to let go, to take it easy. There was sobbing in the background. A nurse was called when the beeping of the machinery decelerated. Mum and brother stood a few steps behind me, away from the bed, stricken with grief. Who would have thought, that day would be the beginning of several years of struggle against illness and death?

My friend and I sat down, at a moment when I felt comfortable to sit down. He asked what word came to mind when I think of dad. I didn't know. But I could see his face, I could see his smiling face, the dark shade of his skin, the thick black hair he still had at age sixty (even though he was ever so conscious of every little strand of white hair and used to spend hours trimming them away in with two small mirrors...)

Then a word did come to mind. Not exactly a nice word, but it was what I felt described dad in the last few years of his life, at least in relation to me and the rest of the family: distant. He isolated himself from everyone, led a solitary life, and lived in a separate apartment for years prior to retirement. We would never know whether he was truly solitary, or, as speculated he had someone else or perhaps another family. But he was truly a distant figure, who appeared very rarely, yet was always still so wiling and able to provide for us the children and support us through university.

I spoke about perhaps dad's proudest moment, looked into the distance and at nothingness an just narrated what came to mind. My friend sat and listened and cried. Perhaps there is something therapeutic in just being allowed to talk, and just having someone listen. Just listening without commentary from someone who doesn't really know what it's like, what if feels like to lose a parent.
It was helpful, and so unlike the ways my friends have snubbed me with cliche comments whenever I start to talk about how difficult and fresh mum's passing has been...

Dad's proudest moment was the few months he spent in New York as a trainee. He lived with a distant relative, who owned an ice cream parlour, out in Flushing Meadows, Queens. There's a picture of dad lying on the floor next to a transparent glass table, and spread on the table were bills of American dollars. He had such pride in his eyes, in his smile. He managed to save so much money in those few months in the US. I was not around yet, and he and mum had just started a new family. Those were the hey years of our family, when mum and dad worked hard to solidify a foundation for a better life for the two children they were to eventually have.

When the time closed on that moment, I could not stop tearing. Those last few moments with dad were so calm and gentle back then, but now, five years later, so painful to remember. How did I manage to stay so strong? How did I manage to be so collected? Why am I so weak now, so broken and in pieces and torn by memories of loss, breakup, feelings of abandonment and loneliness, and haunted by traumas of my childhood?

Perhaps I never had time to grief, properly grieve day's passing, my friend suggested. Perhaps, I do not know. For immediately after dad passed, mum's treatments for cancer increases in frequency and reoccurred occurred every single year. Did I really have time to grieve, to live my life, to pick up the pieces, to salvage all the memories and belongings before mum's illness and needs took over?

At 2.21pm local time, with my fingers I snubbed out the flame.