October 22, 2010

• separation

  Separation is neither definitively good nor bad.  There are times when you need to be separated (like in the case of serious dysfunctional addiction) and there are times when separation is bad (like mom and toddler at the carnival).  Some separation is temporary and some permanent - and none more permanent than death.

  Today I was permanently separated from someone.  And yes, death took him.  There is a case to be made for both sides in that it was good and bad... but as the person left behind, it is harder to feel good about it even if your head knows it's okay.

  On March 26, 1922 my grampa was born.  The story of his life is long, and filled with trials and tribulations.  He came to age during the Japanese invasion (for those of you who aren't familiar with the history, little tiny Japan invaded the enormous land mass that is China... and yes... Japan was stronger.  If you want the details, go look it up.  I may write about it one day, but not today).  He survived the torment that was the Cultural Revolution and tried to raised a family through it.  Go watch Farewell my Concubine if you'd like a sample of that torment - and for the record, no... my grampa was not in the Chinese opera.  He was a quality control inspector for various manufacturing plants... and a union organizer.  His China was not the China of today.  Many of the hardships he endured then would be unimaginable for your average Canadian born Chinese kid today.

  My mother escaped China in her early 20s and eventually moved to Canada.  I did not meet her father until he immigrated to Canada in 1988.  I was just a child at the time and had grown up with my father's dad.  He wasn't the most conventional grampa and I had longed for the kind of grampa that kids read about in stories at Christmas time.  I expected that this other grampa that was coming to Canada would be the kind of grampa who sat in a rocking chair, smoked a pipe, and told many interesting and funny "When I was your age" stories.  This might sound horrible, but all I got was someone who looked and dressed like the BFG and smoked cigarettes.  He did have a pipe he smoked on occasion but so did my other grampa so that didn't cut it.

  I was disappointed, but I grew to love him in spite of this.  He taught me a lot about the history of China.  Not the kind of history you learn from reading history books, but kind of history you can only learn from someone who was actually there. And although I will never agree with the methodology employed by the Communist party, I did learn to understand the fundamentals that started the movement in China.

  My grampa was not perfect by any means.  But he was an honourable man who loved his country (China) dearly.  As a typical Chinese man of the times, he was not good at showing affection, but he was an expert at showing pride.  He was prodigiously proud of all his grandchildren and loved us all very dearly.  There are some grandchildren that he rarely got to see (separated by geographical distance, failed marriages, and in some cases both) and did not get a chance to really know, but every single update he got was proudly shared with all around.  He took pride in our educational successes and upon hearing that we had all turned out to be good kids (i.e. we're not criminals, thugs, or drug dealers).

  Today we were separated from him at 5 am.  It was the first time where Toronto East General did not physically torment him for hours only to dredge him back from the brink of death to the point of "at least he's alive."  After the last round of life preserving measures taken by that god-forsaken institution, he expressed that he wanted to go with dignity and on his own terms.  Although it was very hard, we agreed.  His paperwork at the nursing home was changed from "life preservation" to "ensure comfort".  They called us to the nursing home last night because his breathing was poor.  They had given him an oxygen tank and nurses came to check on him every hour.  When we sat with him, he was alert (he could recognize everyone) but he could not talk.  We left him to sleep with promises to come back the next day to see him.  It's a promise that we kept, but not under the circumstances we would have liked.  After all, he was not obliged to keep the same promise.  At 4 am, when the first of us arrived at the nursing home he had already stopped breathing.  I arrived before the doctor made his declaration, but he was already gone.

  Eighty-eight years of life is a long time.  And of course there are many moments when I look back on my life with him and say "I could've, should've done better" but I know that my grampa loved me and I did do the best I could have done.  He left telling everyone that I'm the Deputy Premier of Ontario (I'm not) and that I was going to change the world (we'll see).  And he leaves behind him a legacy of grandchildren who have all achieved more than he could have hoped for.

  Rest in peace, Grampa.  We love you.  We miss you.  But we know that you're in a place without pain and suffering, so we will learn to let you go.

  • 7:42 pm
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