Goodbye, grandad

Early yesterday morning my grandfather passed away. He'd been ill for about two weeks and was staying at a hospital in southern Taiwan, where my aunt works as a nurse. I went down two days a week and stayed with him. With him being in intensive care, were allowed 2 visits of 30 minutes each every day. All our extended family who could make it went to see him. My aunt flew back from Canada. I don't remember the last time when we were all together somewhere. He was very lucid, but in a great deal of pain. He had a feeding tube and was hooked up to a breathing machine. He couldn't speak so we gave him a clipboard and a pen. He asked for coffee.

Since he got ill I'd been thinking about all the things I know and remember about him. I don't know which memory is my earliest of my grandfather. Probably the time when he put me off smoking for the rest of my life: I asked if smoking is fun, since he does it so much. He told me that it is great fun, so I asked if I could try it. He lit a cigarette for me and gave it to me. I inhaled deeply and spent the next 10 minutes hacking my lungs out, tears streaming. My grandfather was a very, very clever man.

He had a whole bundle of grand-children: my father is the eldest of 5 kids, and there are 10 of us grand-kids in all. When I was wee I used to think that my grandfather liked my brother best. My brother was a very well behaved child. I remember sitting in at Japanese restaurant with my grandfather as a child, waiting for takeaway. I asked him if I could ask him a question and he said yes. I asked which one of his grand-children he prefer most. He laughed (I think slightly embarrassed but also surprised that I'd asked such a question), and said that he likes us all equally.

My grandfather was a avid golfer and mahjong player. He tried to get me into golf, buying me a membership at a country golf club and getting me a whole golfing kit (plus lessons). I was more interested in the restaurant attached to the club house, and the big lunches after a day on the driving range. I think I only went there once. He never tried to get me into mahjong, though twice he taught me to play during Chinese New Year. I never got good at it, but I always enjoyed asking him if he'd won after his pals have been 'round for a few games. Most of the times he says he'd won, and would give me a share of the takings.

As he got older, his eyesight began to wane. He was forbidden (as though we dared forbid him) from driving long distances. Still he occasionally drove me to school, and in Canada we had our weekly shopping trips to the local grocery store. My grandfather was a very methodical man. We had a shopping routine where he pushed the trolley and I got the food. We started on the left hand side, with fruit & veg, then the deli counter, the dried pasta, the tea bags and his cereal (Tony's Team Tiger Frosted Flakes), the meat, and rounded off with eggs, milk, juice, and occasionally ice cream. Once my father went grocery shopping with us, and he tried to make me push the trolley. My grandfather grabbed the trolley from him, and waved a dismissive hand (implying: "you who do not know how the shopping works, do not interfere"). We then proceeded in the usual manner.

He had a penchant for luxury vehicles: Mercedes Benz especially, and once, a Cadillac that was more boat than car. Once he told me that when he was a child, he saw rich people with houses and cars, and he swore that he'd have a house and a nice car one day. Well, he had those things several times over and more. In fact, he went from being a poor country boy who lost his father at the age of 9 and had only primary school education to being a successful businessman who spoke 3 languages, put 5 kids through university, moved most of them to Canada, and learned to use Skype and read newspapers on line at the age of 79.

Above all my grandfather was a generous man. Ever since I could remember, he had been giving me money. Red envelope money at New Year was a must, but it went far beyond that. Whenever he drove me to a film with my friends he would hand me a bill (on occasion, a wad of cash), and made sure I was more than reasonably well provided for on my journeys away from home. It was his way of showing us that he cares about our welfare and is looking after us. When the money was given for good grades (or getting into a good university), it was also his way of showing that he's proud of us. This Chinese New Year Toph and I both got a heavily laden red envelope from him. Topher's red envelope money has quickly re-materialized in the form of a pair of luxury studio monitors which are blasting out drum & bass in our Jinshan home. I squandered some of mine on clothes and deposited the rest into my bank account. (If I were anything like the cunning investor my grandfather was, I'd do something clever with the remainder.)

Of course he had his shortcomings like every other man. He was never able to kick his addiction to tobacco, which was the source of so much of his health troubles. He was sometimes temperamental and impatient. He was prone to bouts of ill humour and mild depression. But these traits don't figure much in my recollections of him. Maybe because we see the past the way we want to see it, but there's also the fact that his good points far outweigh the bad.

Above all I think his death has made me realize the meaning of "never" for the first time. Normally it's never say never, because so little is for certain. But I know for sure that I will never see my grandfather again. The enormity of that is too much to comprehend. Ever since there was an "I," there has been an "阿公" (grandad). I find it difficult to imagine that I will not visit him again in his Taipei home, or see him having tea or sneaking a smoke in the garage in Canada, or hear his voice on the other end of the line at 3 a.m. in Edinburgh. I find it difficult to understand that he won't be there holding a red envelope of congratulatory cash, smiling broadly, when I get my PhD. Somehow the "family" doesn't feel complete without him, the much beloved patriarch that he is.

I understand Tony Harrison's sentiments in Long Distance II, "I believe life ends with death, and that is all. / You haven't both gone shopping; just the same, / in my new black leather phone book there's your name / and the disconnected number I still call."

Goodbye grandad. I will miss you.