and Words
Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door
I know that I’m a prisoner
To all my Father held so dear
I know that I’m a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
It was an August morning in 1977 in Puerto Rico, my mom had called home from the hospital and my older sister answered the phone. My shell-shocked sister repeated my mom’s words verbatim, “Don’t tell the little ones that dad died.” This is the moment when I first found out my father had passed away. I was nine years old, and in that instant, my whole world tumbled.
My mom returned to our house shortly after. She barely exited the car before she collapsed in despair. Both of my parents were pillars of strength and today all of that flew out the window. My dad grew up very poor and became an apprentice in a kitchen in Hong Kong. He was an excellent chef, and he was an unofficial mentor to many. He was loved by many.
Word got around quickly in the community and before we realized what happened, our house was full of people. None of them were family, but all of them were family. This was literally later that same day; this wasn’t a funeral, burial, or its reception. This is a flood of people coming over to take care of family.
That day my dad’s friend pulls me aside to a table. He looks at me sadly and seriously. He quietly tells me that I’m now the man of the house and instructs me to take care of my mother and sisters. That’s as specific as he got; he left no further instructions. What is a boy of nine to do with that?
My dad was my hero. He was taller and stronger than I. As a chef, he had an industrial-sized can opener firmly mounted to a table; the lever was nearly as long as my forearm. I watched in quiet fascination as he opened volleyball-sized cans almost absentmindedly; I was never able to operate it or at least not while he lived. He watched me with amusement as I tried to pull that level and failed each time. Others not only loved, but also admired him; they often called him by the Chinese term for ‘sensei’. He was empathetic and compassionate and was an exceptional mentor. He built Lego structures with me; wild and whimsical, brightly colored structures that served no purpose but to spend time with me.
It’s easy to rationalize that every boy of that age worships his father, but there’s more to it than that. He may have been a man of modest education, but even reflecting on it now, he excelled at everything that he tried. He ran his own restaurant. I don’t mean that he merely managed it; he was literally the only person in the kitchen. He built the kitchen in that restaurant; not just picking out the equipment, he laid out the structures with burners and built cement structures for the array of woks that he used artfully. He built the tables where he laid out different items to cool. They were often lined with large vats of white rice or pans of bright red barbecue pork or spareribs.
It’s only natural to think about what kind of relationship we’d have as adults. As a child, I spoke to him in Cantonese, but I wonder if that would change as I grew older. I believe that we had similar work ethic, but I never saw him rest. We were both dedicated to our craft. I believe that we were both good mentors. I remember him to be of great empathy and compassion, both ideals that I value. Only recently, while I studied a picture of he and my mom, did I realize that I’m taller; this made me smile.
Over the years I have reflected on particular moments. There have been graduations, both mine and my sisters’ where he was conspicuously missing. There have been weddings, including one where I gave away my younger sister. Are these moments to celebrate or to mourn?
Shortly after my 27th birthday, I spent one weekend evening at my friend’s apartment playing games. We stepped outside to stretch our legs and stood for a few moments under a car port as we chatted. I mentioned that at this point I had lived twice as long without my dad than I had lived with him. It all felt surreally distant and almost impossible, but the numbers don’t lie. My friend just listened in attentive silence.
The last such milestone was about six months past my 42nd birthday. I had made a mental note of it but never set a reminder; it came and went without any attention. This was the day that I outlived my father. Once I realized that it passed it filled me with an ethereal sadness. Did I believe that I was on borrowed time? Or maybe I felt that I robbed him of some of his.
Sometimes I want to just scream in self-pity about the vast unfairness of it all, but it’s all I’ve ever known. I have now lived more than four times longer without him than I have with him. The trajectory of my life abruptly changed on that fateful day in 1977. I’ve become a product of my life without him; overcoming that adversity has shaped who I am today. To long for a life with him would be to deny my own existence as I am today; I could drive myself mad thinking about this.
Every time I hear this song my mind races back to those moments I shared with my dad. I reflect on the words in the song as they speak of long history of strain and conflict between a son and his father. Still, it’s got an air of transcendence and hope. Yet with as much sadness as I feel while listening to it, I am envious.
There may be angst and conflict in those words, but there’s passion. I got nothing, or very little. I got slivers of memory that can be barely pieced together to form one picture. Growing up Chinese, I lived in a world of stoicism and unyielding reason. The idea of feeling anger about his death is one that is incomprehensible, yet I felt it.
We have two stories of two fathers and two sons that diverged and went on very different directions. So why do I feel his pain and his regret? Maybe I’m saddened by the fact that he squandered that opportunity when I didn’t even have that chance. I only hope that I have become the kind of man that would make him proud; I had some big shoes to fill.