Remembrance

A week ago I had dinner with a couple who knew my parents from back in the 70's. They'd lived in Dallas, had a daughter the same year I was born (whom I eventually went to college with), then a son a couple years later, then moved to Houston. Long history extended between us and them.

They'd come from Taiwan. The man had gone to the same college in Taiwan as my dad -- the same department even but a decade later -- and also worked for the same company in Dallas. So he knew my dad differently than I did. Well, that goes without saying. But I mean, the image that he had of my dad, the portrait associated with the name, was probably different than mine. A younger version of my dad. In the flush of youth. A family just seeded. A job at an oil company from the heady days of oil. The yard at our house with nothing but a couple saplings.

When I met them for dinner -- they were here on a stopover to catch a cruise on Monday -- we talked first about Vancouver, the weather, their kids. But then we spoke about my dad. About the funeral -- they'd been in China at the time -- and what I'd written, the commemoration my parents' friends had on Day 49 (a symbolic day), the one upcoming on Day 100 (another symbolic day).

Then we talked about their time in Dallas, when both he and my dad had worked for the same oil company. My dad was working in an off-campus extension, a little office by the airport. And he had a friend I'd never heard about, an Egyptian man working in the same office. They took midday walks, this man and my dad, around the cars in the parking lot. It was a jewel of a story.

When I thought about it afterward, I thought how funny it was that we may love a person but never know everything about that person, how we may, in the words of Norman Maclean, "love completely without complete understanding." I knew my dad only as my dad. But whatever he meant to other people remains just paper knowledge. As if I'd read a story in a book, and he appeared on every page.

Mirror

Lately people I've never met -- or rather people I met so long ago I don't remember them -- have been coming up to me, judging my face from one angle then another, and telling me I remind them of my father.

One time the top half of my face was judged to be more like his, another time the bottom half. I've never seen much semblance either way, even when I hold pictures of him up next to me in a mirror and squint really hard.

But I'm okay with this, with not seeing what other people see when they see him in me but I don't. I'm okay with serving as a living portrait of him, in a physical sense or emotional sense, in a genetic sense, or in whatever other sense people want.

Lately I've been trying to think whether my father had any qualities that I wouldn't want, and I haven't thought of any. Maybe someday I'll be able to, recall a time he spoke words too harsh or made a judgment too rash. Or remember thinking, I'll never do that with my kids. But as of now that hasn't happened.

And so, people seeing my father in me, that's okay. In fact, some days I think it's more than okay. It's more than I deserve.

Onward

Is it always best, at the least appropriate, to keep moving forward?

Life -- sometimes over our own objections howled into the rafters and dug into the ground -- finds a way.

Scenes from the UBC Botanical Garden:



The inukshuk at English Bay:


The docks at Steveston:

Sitting in my office

Sitting in my office,
I poke at my side
Wondering how soft it's gotten
From two weeks at home
When everyone brought food over
And told me to eat.

I poke at my head
Wondering how soft that's gotten too
From a month of people telling me
How sorry they are
And to let them know
If there's anything they can do.

I'm sorry too.
That's my standard reply.

I poke at my side
Remembering how I used to wince
When returning from the yard
He'd have a cut on his thumb,
Make his way to the bathroom
And apply the red mercuric tincture.
How big a man could bleed,
It was a God-fearing wonder.

I poke at my head
Wondering how concussive a blow
Could snuff the light of so kind a man.

I die a hundred times a day
My father's death.