My uncle died today.
We had never liked him; we had barely known him, actually. We met him and his wife three times a year, on Chinese New Year’s Eve, Chinese New Year and Qingming. We met them four times this year because of Fei’s wedding, which was such a historic, happy day that my brother, when he was very, very, very drunk, hugged my uncle. (But not my aunt; he was smashed but not that smashed.)
Like and dislike are such trivialities in the end. You don’t have to like a man to hold his wailing widow in the mortuary. You don’t have to like her to help her file the paperwork. You just have to be adult and be around. Their daughter had to go get her kids. Their son-in-law had gone to Hong Kong. This is what family means: When they’ve got no one you are all they’ve got.
My father had hardly known his own brother and parents. Theirs was a star-crossed family who never had one meal together. Not a single meal, my father marvelled today while we were making our way home. To all intents and purposes, the brothers were orphaned by Woodbridge and separated by the recession in the Sixties, when my father had to work up north in Kota Bharu or starve. “We never had a close bond like you and Fei. We never were together long.”
Yet, previous to his seven years in Kota Bharu, when he was jobless and distressed for eight months, when he was down-and-out, “your uncle gave me $2 a week, and he paid for my haircuts, and for New Year he gave me $5”. He smiled ever so slightly at the recollection. Once upon a time, before there were wives and issues, a 15-year-old who was paid $40 a month gave an 18-year-old comfort because they were brothers. That 15-year-old died today.
