A Toast to Dad
“That which gives light, must endure burning”
— Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor
11th of April, Monday. It might be what most working adult would regard as the most universally hated day. Monday blue, they call it.
Not so much for me. Monday, to me, was quite neutral in a way. It marks the end of limited weekend, and the beginning of another long week. Work was great, colleagues were friendly and there was a new guy coming in that day. I was looking forward to it.
Working life gets kinda routine after a while. Once you get a hang of it, your life sets into a rather predictable cycle. I thought that the day would be like any other weekdays: The usual 8 or 9 hours of work, sweating it out at the gym, followed by some surfing on the net before the much awaited sleep in the unfortunately hot room. Not that day.
At around 3.30 pm, my phone rang. I usually set my phone on silent, and only to ring when there are urgent calls from my family. But my family members rarely call me when I am working. So that was weird.
Weird, but nothing out of extraordinary. I thought to myself as I answered the call. Answering it, I heard my mother’s voice. Weak, wobbling with a tinge of sadness. At the other end of the line, I can hear her sobbing uncontrollably. Not good, I thought to myself.
In between the screaming sobs and hysterical crying, I could only make out a few words clearly. “Come back… dad… gone”.
It took me a few moments to get a grip of reality. Then it hit me. My dad just passed away.
It has been a few weeks since that. Time flies quickly during the past few weeks. By nature, our family is tough and shows little emotion in public. Yet, when the news hit us, we cried incessantly. It must have been a bucket load of tears that day.
My father is a happy-go-lucky guy. At 61, he’s thin as a stick, and looks half his age, with his dyed black hair and always smiling face. Born as the third eldest in a family of 6, he was a wild one. When he was young, he was privileged enough to study till high school, a rare feat at his time in the early 80s, especially for an Asian.
We were poor during my childhood, but that didn’t stop my dad from being kind to others. He is a minimalistic person, preferring to give all the money away than to save on his own. He has only a few vices, smoking and drinking, which sadly have contributed to his untimely demise. What’s truly striking is that even when we were poor and living in less than decent condition, he never once complained about it, and in fact often he would worry about the beggars or other homeless people on the roadside.
Growing up, I didn’t really know much about him. My father is not very expressive. He is a man of a few words. Many a time I wondered what he is thinking. Yet, being his son, I sort of inherited his genetic introversion, and therefore less likely to start conversations. Conversations between two introverts, especially between a father and son, can be pretty limited. Our conversations always bounce back between the state of the affair of our nation, the world, and some mundane topics like “How’s life?”. Never do we go knee deep into a topic, because growing up, we don’t really have much deep conversations about anything. He had his own life, while I had mine. That was about it.
In hindsight, I ought to dig deeper. The onus is probably on me to start something. There are only a few limited traits of him I know of. For one, philosophy is one of his favorite conversational topic.
In rare instances where he showed interest, it’s about the philosophy of life. Many a time, he will share his philosophy about master and slave. My most vivid memory of this was when he shared about fire. For decades, we humans enslave fire, command it to burn woods, generating heat, keeping us warm during the winter. We use fire to cook, providing us with wonderful, warm food. In these instances, fire is our slave, and we are the master. Used properly, it can help improve our life. One wrong step, and the roles could reverse. Fire could burn your house and destroy everything around you. There’s a very fine line between these two roles, and if we are not careful, things could go wrong easily.
Another trait of his is that he detests politics and money. I remember a vivid incident where I bought “Snowball”, a biography of Warren Buffett, eager to share it with him. He was aghast, thinking that it’s a sign that his son is embracing capitalism and forgetting about the evil of money. It was clear, by the outburst of his raw emotions shown, that he detests anything related to capitalism. My father is a kind man, maybe too kind, and that kindness and brutal honesty of his does not suit well in this capitalistic world.
In contrast, there was once where I left “Mind Games”, a mind reading books by Marc Salem in the car. He was driving my car and read it. When I came back home and saw him, he excitedly shared it with me, singing praises of it. “Now, this is interesting. “ he would say. I guess he is trying to tell me indirectly not to focus too much on the material things and rather to do things I find interesting instead. He’s a child at heart, and a wild wanderer, a fact that I only discover much later during his funeral.
The traditional Chinese funeral consumes a lot of time and money. It lasted 5 days. In that 5 days, however, I am grateful that I have learned so much about his life than I ever did in the past 25 years. As various people from all walks of life came and pay their last respect, I heard many anecdotes about my father, and learned about many sides of him I never knew existed.
On the 3rd day of the funeral procession, an odd pair of old gentleman and lady came. The pair were probably in their 80s, yet displayed a vitality that belies their age. They turned out to be the caretakers of my father when he was young, around the age of 8 years old or so. They told me that my father was a smart, but rebellious kid, a trait that I would never identify my father with.
When he was young, apparently he was a powerful advocate of the counterculture movement, and a true blue hipster, even before the term was invented. As a young Asian teenager, upon graduation he flew to Germany, all by himself, to do some “soul-searching”, then got deported, went to Paris and became an object of affection with several beautiful ladies in different cities.
What the heck? Where did that come from? It was unimaginable. You are telling me the decent, always smiling, thin, frail uncle that was my dad was once a chain-smoking, country-hopping playboy? That did not just happen.
But it did. And it was a wonderful surprise. It was the first of the many surprises that my family had. We met cousins we never knew existed and subsequently fostered a closer relationship with them. I met friends that we haven’t talked to for a long time, and it gave us an opportunity to bond again. As we chatted and poked fun of each other entire night, I realized I am blessed beyond belief. All of which would not happen, if it wasn’t for this incident.
As with many things in life, there is a beginning and ending. It’s hard to find meaning in something so tragic. But life is not about sadness and grief. Sure, grief and sorrow are part and parcel of life, but we should remember that they are just parts of it. Life is like a roller coaster, without the downs, we won’t know how to enjoy the ups. We gotta learn how to embrace the good and bad of it all.
My father is probably the prime example of this, a man that epitomizes the principle of “happy-go-lucky”. I am sure, if he knows his life is ending, he would have said something along the line of “Well, that was fun. It has been a long ride, but every moment was worth it. See ya”, with a smile brimming of pure happiness. That’s just how he is.
