06.29.07
This is dedicated to those who died…
The title of today’s post is a line from a song by Mighty Sparrow.
Yeah, I need to think more about those in my family who died. I need to think more about my aging relatives in New York and California, and of course my mom and adoptive father in Vancouver. I need to think more about my ancestors. We have a little Buddhist shrine in our apartment (my wife’s family belongs a modern Buddhist sect whose name I forgot) and I ding the bell thingamajig and say a prayer to my ancestors now and then. I need to get some photos of my grandparents and Shiho’s grandparents and put them by the shrine. You see, this is one of the things that attracts me to Korean and Japanese culture. I like how Confucianism teaches respect for one’s ancestors. People are taught that if it weren’t for their ancestors, they wouldn’t even be here in the first place. I don’t think Canadians/Americans spend nearly enough time being thankful to those from whose lineage they are descended.
Yeah, now that I’m a little older (going on 34), I’m more cognizant about what’s important in life. And yes, before you object, I do believe that there are certain objective truths—like the fact that family and friends matter more than fame and wealth.
I wish I had spent more time with my Aunt Jean and Uncle Louie. Aunt Jean passed away several years ago, and Uncle Louie only a couple. Aunt Jean was in a bad way before her demise. She was suffering from both diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Uncle Louie, however, had (as far as I understand it) been in fair health. He was a pretty hale old man, driving his car even into his early nineties. Until, however, he started getting problems with his prostate. From what I heard, he wasn’t too willing to discuss or deal with the problem, and it got worse and worse until his condition necessitated surgery. After the operation, he was having problems holding his bladder and bowels, and he had to wear diapers. Of course he wasn’t happy about that. Then he had to go back in the hospital for more treatment and all of a sudden, the next day, he was dead. He died from an insulin coma—he didn’t even have diabetes but the staff gave him insulin, which put him on death’s door.
Fuck. And I remember talking to him just a couple months before he died (he was in Cali, I was in Japan). He was in a care facility at the time and he broke down on the phone, saying how beautiful my babies were and mourning my father (his younger brother), who he said never should have died so young. He recalled how at the age of two my father could sing along to the family’s set of Victrola records.
So I never got to visit him again.
I told mom afterwards, “It’s so sad Uncle Louie died.” She replied that he had had a long life. But that was little consolation. Why do we even have to die?
So now I have my own young’uns and am a father in my own right. There’s so much to document about my kids.
I fed formula to Milo every night (Shiho needed her sleep) from about May 2006 to December 2006, at which point Milo was 18 months old. And then, all of a sudden, Milo started crying after I fed him formula in the wee hours, and wouldn’t go back to bed with me. He needed to be in bed beside Mommy.
Mickey had always been closer to Mommy than me, but now Milo had become closer as well. I felt a bit rejected but got used to it. I am close to my sons, but when they hurt themselves as they romp about the flat, they invariably run past me and seek comfort in Mom’s arms (even though Mom often doesn’t want to soothe them whereas I do). Come night formula feeding time, Milo no longer lets me feed him the bottle (Mickey, for his part, never really did), and the two play a funny game. Not yet asleep, they still want to play. So they come out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to giggle and laugh with me. But when I follow them back into their sleeping quarters and try to play some more, they suddenly up and cry. It’s a kind of acting, this mock unhappiness. I can’t really understand why they do it, but it’s funny nevertheless.
My hands need a break from typing, but I’ll try to record our family life with more faithfulness.
‘nighty-night.
