Someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide...
My grandma passed away last month while I was in Thailand. It was weird that I had been told she would be passing soon and that it happened in the middle of my vacation. I don't remember anything about her, since I've only met her once before Alzheimer's took over.
In Phuket, a family friend told me and the next day we were riding a speedboat through the neighboring islands. Even on a massive engine-powered hunk of steel, it feels close to nature. I remember looking at the clouds with their silver-linings and dark underbellies and thinking about matriarchy... a word I find fitting to use with the mother of 13 children.
In the coming days, her children and grandchildren would be coming to a temple to pray for her around the clock. My dad and my brother would come the furthest from Los Angeles to see her. It was interesting to see everyone together and the levels of "relatedness" with her sons and daughters wearing a burlap dressing, while her grandchildren were dressed in white cloths. Her immediate descendants, totaling over 100 persons at last count have about the same relationship as kids who went to class together... and probably even less of a relationship with the grandmother herself.
Being in Thailand this time really made me realize a lot of things about my privileges. In the room next to ours at the temple, where 50 or so guests came each of the three nights that we worshipped my grandmother and sent her gifts and money and cars and houses and televisions and servants... a small family sat quietly in front of a picture of an old man. The coffin looked like that of a small child, and seemed like he had either never really grown very much or had shrunken towards his later years.
My cousins and I occasionally poured out of our space, and only when we realized that we had encroached on theirs, did we attempt any modesty. Everyone made a big deal about having paid the monks so much to have such a good service. It seems strange to get so much larger an allotment in heaven, because your kids have more money.
In Phuket, I tried to balance the aspect of vacation and the acknowledgment of her death. But as I went for a massage in the gay district of Patong Beach, and gave the masseuse a tip that covered a little under a month of his living expenses, I couldn't help but think how far this apple has fallen from the tree.
The next weekend I visited the village of my grandfather in Chaozhou (潮州） and realized again how I've come to receive the privileges that I have. It was just another town with a lot of nameless cousins, all of whom will make a poor living for the rest of their lives. That sounds really miserable, I know... but there is a good chance that they will find love and happiness and raise children who will take care of them well, also. Still it seems, that my grandfather and then my father have both made huge migrations to give their kids a better life. My grandfather left Chaozhou to go to Thailand during the Japanese invasion. Over the next few decades he would rendezvous with his brothers in Hong Kong and give them money to support the family. My father left Thailand for Los Angeles, and while he works hard everday, he had allowed me a comfortable lifestyle, and an education which has led to me giving myself a comfortable lifestyle (even though I may bitch about what a Berkeley degree can actually do for me).
What's sick about this blog is that it's been all about money. Death and money. Offspring and money. Sex and money. Sometimes you get so occupied trying to get out of your debts and financial troubles you forget about the important things. I saw my dad cry for the first time in my life at the funeral. It was awkward. But I guess it was also important.
