Drawing out your week 22.5.2021

On Sunday evenings or early Monday mornings, I sometimes take out a note book and sketch out the things I need to do for the week. It gives me a mental picture of what we need to achieve in the coming week.

 

Pa

Photo of my father taken at my grandparent's house. This was the corner room where my youngest slept.

On the 6th of April this year, my father passed away after falling ill to Alzheimer's several years ago. 

The house maid had woken up and found him gone, she rang my sister who texted us at 1:40 a.m. ' he's really gone' were her words which I take to mean that he had left us earlier and this time it was final.

Pa had not been himself for several years before this, suffering from bouts of confusion and anxiety (often about money). I recall one incident when we were holidaying with them in Penang, when he broke down and asked me for money. When I explained that we have been giving him and mom money each month, he asked for money to be separately given to him, to which I agreed. He calmed down immediately after I said that and seemed to forget about the episode for the rest of the trip.

So when he passed, I was sad and relieved at the same time, as were my siblings I believe. After all the real Pa left years ago with only a shell of him left mostly immobile in a hospital bed in the downstairs study. I am ashamed to say that I hardly went into the room to greet him or try to interact with him when I visit the house - I did not feel that he was there and did not want to put up with the charades. 

Was he a good father? Like most Asian fathers he found difficulty in expressing his love, he was distant and did not really involve himself in my life when I was growing up. He had his work, basketball coaching, and his sports and hobbies. He once mentioned to a friend - he is a good boy but not very bright, I was about 6 then. We were at a picnic and the friend was entertaining us children with some brain teasers. I remember that it was a coin puzzle (which I did not manage to solve).

Despite that there were lessons taught and learnt, some were direct and other were observed and absorbed - here is an incomplete list. 

1. Thrift - and making do with what we have or were given. Values which we cultivate with Sean and Sara. 

2. Using our hands - through woodworking projects, making stuff instead of buying them, seeing the value in something discarded; another lesson handed down to my children.

3. The love of books - as a former librarian, he introduced us to the library while two women in my life gave me books which I can own (my auntie) and magazines which I collect (my grandmother).

4. Sports - unsuccessfully with me, his coaching methods worked better with his charges in the basketball team (who paid their last respects quite touchingly - several tearfully biding him a safe journey).

5. Speaking your mind - this is probably the most significant character of the man which I inherited; saying things as we see it, calling out the liars and fakers and setting things right when we see unfairness.  

He also taught me about self improvement, he subscribed to TIME magazines, and read historical accounts of WW2 and China, he attended correspondence courses and enrolled us in Mandarin classes (which I hated but later valued) and for that, I am a better person having grown up as his son.