Recollections

My Gong Gong passed away last week.

I remember when my grandmother passed away six years ago. I was at church practicing for worship. I got a phone call from my sister who said that Mah Mah had been admitted to the hospital and that she had been diagnosed with Cancer. I cried immediately upon hearing the news.

Mah Mah had immigrated to Canada when I was one-year-old. We had spent countless family occasions together, and during our childhood, she would often babysit us or we would sleepover at her house. That short month and a half that was spent visiting her at the hospital as she grew weaker and weaker, and then that final night when we had gone over to her house after she had just passed on, brought an immense sadness over our family. At the cemetery on the day of the funeral, it was also the first time I had witnessed tears coming down my father’s eyes.

It’s a different story with my Gong Gong. He lived in Hong Kong. He visited us a few times during the first two decades of my life. If it were not for old pictures in our family albums, I would not even have remembered most of those times. As a result, I have few and sparse memories of who he was or my relationship with him.

Last week, when I received the phone call that he had passed away, I felt a pang of sadness. No tears, just sadness. Two years ago, I had visited Hong Kong with my mom and my husband. We stayed at Po Po and Gong Gong’s place. It was the same place they had lived in for the past fifty years, only renovated. Upon our arrival, my mom had just begun to hire help for Gong Gong to relieve the burden off Po Po. Her name was Cindy, and she came from the Philippines. She cooked for us, cleaned, bathed Gong Gong, even helped him cut his nails, pick his nose, down to the nitty gritty.

Even sharing the same flat with them, I did not see Gong Gong much. He stayed in his room most of the day. Everyone encouraged him to take walks outside, but having experienced an injury during his last walk outside—after falling—he developed a fear of it, and stubbornly stayed indoors.

Because Gong Gong was on medication, his Alzheimer’s was not immediately apparent—although I knew it was pretty severe. I guess when you don’t know someone well to start with—it’s not obvious when he acts like he doesn’t know who you are.

Dinnertime was when his deteriorating physical condition was the most obvious to me. He wanted to feed himself. Po Po would scoop food into his bowl, give him the portions that were easy to chew. I watched as he slowly brought the spoon to his lips, his hands shaking, his lips quivering, some of the rice making it into his mouth, but most of it falling onto the table. It was like watching a toddler feed himself, but worse.

When I was in grade eight, my homeroom teacher gave us an assignment. We had to write a biography on a family member. It was probably one of the most valuable assignments I ever had to do in elementary school. I chose to do it on my mom. It wasn’t until I did that biography that I realized how little I knew about my mom’s history. My mom never really volunteered information about her past. We had to ask. We had to probe. And a lot of the time, it never occurred to me to ask such specific questions. It was when I was thirteen-years-old that I learned that my mom was not supposed to be the oldest of five children in the family. A boy had been born before her, a stillborn. My mom said that this was the reason why she was not treated inadequately, even though she was a girl. The fortuneteller had told her parents that having a boy would have brought bad luck. She also had another sister once, but she had died due to ill health. They were very, very poor, my mom told me—rice and soy sauce for dinner; clothing was used and reused for the seasons, sewn and resewn; accusations at school were always directed at her when theft took place.

Gong Gong was absent, my mom told me. He smoked. He drank. He gambled. He had extra-marital affairs. Po Po took care of them. Even when she was going into labour, Po Po had to walk to the doctor’s by herself.

As a child, I was taught to pray for Po Po and Gong Gong’s souls. Po Po accepted Christ over a decade ago (God worked sovereignly in her life and her story is an amazing one too, but this entry is about Gong Gong). After Mah Mah died, my mom realized how little time she had left with her parents, so she began flying back to Hong Kong once a year. Starting then, she shared the gospel with Gong Gong again and again, but to no avail. Even in his physical and mental condition, he was still able to give a resolute “No” when she asked him whether he knew he was a sinner and needed to be forgiven.

Gong Gong accepted Christ in 2007. My mom gave a testimony of her experience during one of our church services. After the service, many people her age came up to me and told me that her testimony had made them cry—made them realize that they needed to work on trying to bring their parents to Christ.

Though I did not know Gong Gong well, I knew of his dark past, and I feel at peace knowing that just last year God forgave him for that dark past because Gong Gong finally saw that he was a sinner before God. That last week, he had breathed his last, but because somehow, beyond our understanding, God had managed to reach out and touch an old man's soul (even in his mental illness he was able to say, "I believe"), his death does not cast a somber shadow over our family but a hopeful one. This is the beauty of the Christian gospel: it is never, never too late.

A couple of days ago, I was reading John Piper’s Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. I came across a passage that talked about what I had been thinking about the past week since I learned of Gong Gong’s death.

"We all die, if Jesus postpones his return. Not to think about what it will be like to leave this life and meet God is folly. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, 'It is better to go to the house of mourning [a funeral] than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.' How can you lay it to heart if you won't think about it? Psalm 90:12 says, 'Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.' Numbering your days means thinking about how few there are and that they will end. How will you get a heart of wisdom if you refuse to think about this? What a waste, if we do not think about death."

I had said earlier that I had felt a pang of sadness upon hearing the news about Gong Gong. Let me emphasize pang. This pang of sadness actually made me feel a bit melancholic. It would have been really "nice", I thought, if I had felt an overwhelming wave of sadness, like the way I felt about Mah Mah when she passed away. But I didn’t know Gong Gong well enough. We barely had a relationship.

As a result, I decided to actively recall my moments with him. At first, I pictured him lying in his bed in the hospital—the tube attached to his body which provided him nutrition. I called to mind the sound of his voice. And always, for some reason, I couldn’t stop evoking the image of his trembling hand bringing the spoon of rice to his mouth.

Then I began to conjure up flashbacks, which I recorded in my journal on November 18, 2008:

“I remember their living with us during their visits from Hong Kong. They stayed in a room in the basement at Hampstead. Gong Gong used to smoke (until his health just couldn’t take it anymore) and mom would give him a dish to be used as an ash tray).

I remember the mornings. Each time he visited, he would boil milk, add an egg and sprinkle in some sugar. That was his breakfast. (There was a time in my early twenties when I made this breakfast too because I thought it tasted pretty good.)

I remember seeing him hold us as toddlers when he was here—in the old photo albums.

I remember his voice. Low, hoarse.

I remember his fragile, helpless state when Lee and I stayed with Gong Gong and Po Po just a few years ago. His bedwetting. His disorientation. His taciturnity (inability to talk).

I remember when Mom told me the story of how she brought Gong Gong to Christ—during a puzzle activity—at this point, Gong Gong having the mental capacity of a six-year-old.

And then I remember how we, as children, would pray and pray for his salvation and the Lord answering our prayers.

(Grace reminded me today of how Gong Gong used to write verses of poetry at Kensington and stuck the verses on random walls around the house—out of sheer boredom he wrote them.)

I wonder if Gong Gong is scared where he is, or whether, in his mental state, he’s thinking about where he is going.”

On the night of Gong Gong’s passing, I waited for Lee to come home from work so that we could pray. That morning, I had not known that Gong Gong was going to die that day, and had intended the prayer time to be for his health. It turned out to be a different prayer time.

Lee and I talked. He asked me, “What are you thinking? Feeling?” We talked about death. Then about how he and I would have to go through the same experience with our parents one day. We talked about how hard that would be. How sad we would be. And then we prayed. Much of the prayer was thankfulness and praise that God had blessed this family—his and mine—so much.

My sister and I are taking the children to see my Yeh Yeh today, my grandpa in Toronto. I am looking forward to the visit. My grandpa is an amazing man, and his contented state is a mystery and great testimony to those around him. The number of people who have approached me in church to praise Yeh Yeh’s character—is unbelievable—yet when they do, I nod in agreement, knowing exactly what they are referring to. Yeh Yeh is the epitome of JOY. No exaggeration. If you met him, you would be thinking the same thing. I have much to learn from him.

Life seems to be like that. At one moment you celebrate life, and then another moment, you are forced to contemplate death. For the believer or non-believer, we all have to come to grips with this inevitable outcome. As John Piper's statement reminds me—are we willing to look death in the face and determine what it means for us? A time of mourning. A time to savour every moment we have with our family and friends. A time to search for concrete and genuine meaning. A time to consider whether eternity really exists—and if it does, how can we go on living as if it didn't?