Goodbye Uncle Charlie

At the breakfast table on New Year's morning, between chewing my oats, I said to Papa, "Let's make a call to Uncle Charlie - we've not spoken to him since my graduation!" My Papa, in his stubborn old thinking, refused again and again, saying that it's too expensive to make international calls. For some reason, Papa is still stuck in a time warp of expensive international phonecalls overseas, eventhough I showed him proof of netphone cards in the denominations of 20 Ringgits for an air time of 2 hours to America. However, I relentlessly coaxed him to just do it.

Finally, after he has finished his breakfast, he went up to the bedroom, and brought down his little wrinkled-up address book. It's the same address book that I gave him 20 years ago for his birthday present. Papa opened the fragile looking address book, and pointed the number to me. I dialed and listened for the ringing tone, and passed it to Papa when the dialing tone came through. Papa looked eager, like a small child concentrating on a lollipop... 100% concentration, and the seconds tick slowly ... it felt like forever. Then he started speaking on the phone, in an introductory way as in who he is, and why he is calling, the other house phone began to ring. It was my sister, calling all the way from London to wish us a Happy New Year, and her big announcement of inviting Valerie (my childhood friend to stay over in London for 2 days).

From my line of vision while I was talking to Agnes, I could see Papa's brows knitted in a row. There was a strange confusion going on as Papa looked more distressed as the seconds went by, and I just had to hang up my call on Agnes and Valerie so that I could attend to Papa's distressed look. I quickly took over the phone conversation, and asked for Uncle Charlie. Ok, he's not there... so, I asked for Michael, Uncle Charlie's only child... and it is Michael, my cousin, that I was speaking to at that moment, but I couldn't recognise his voice! I felt awkward, and began the conversation with the usual 'How are you' bla bla bla... and asked Michael whether he still remembers me! Well, of course he does... he doesn't get visitors from Malaysia very often. Only then, bit by bit, the story unfolded, and we found out that Uncle Charlie has passed away minutes to my 33rd birthday last year. Michael said he kept repeating that to Papa, but he couldn't seem to hear it, but why is Papa seated so still beside me with a faraway look in his eyes? He must have understood it. I think Papa heard it, but he just couldn't accept it. Papa started to shed silent tears. He has lost his cousin, and it's symbolic to Papa since it's the first closely-related Yong in his generation to have passed away.

I continued speaking to Michael for a long time, while Papa sat quietly with tears rolling down his cheeks... he seemed to have grown so old and shrunken... broke my heart.... I was too in that condition, but still, I was happy to have found out that Michael has finally married Diane, and together, they have 3-year-old twins and a bouncing baby boy of 15 months. The conversation went on, and I repeated all the bits of what Michael said so that Papa could be part of the conversation. The accounts how how Uncle Charlie passed on and so forth. It was a premature death. So unexpected, and so painful. A stroke after a freak accident that left Uncle Charlie paralysed and completely lost his voice, and a 1.5 years bounded to the wheel chair, and finally, he joined the Lord at the second stroke on 30th March 2004. It hurt both Papa and I to hear this, because we know how lively Uncle Charlie is, and he is so up and going and independent... and so handsome! Surely, he has suffered a great deal and didn't want to live anymore when he was bounded to the wheelchair.

At the end of my call to Michael, I asked for the phone numbers of Uncle Patrick, Uncle Franklin, Aunt Julia, Aunt Pauline and Aunt Grace - all of Uncle Charlie's siblings. All these names that I've heard while growing up, but my memory of them were of a family picture taken in 1937. The year that Grand Uncle's family made their last visit to Malaysia before they headed off to Shanghai again, and later years to escape communist China by migrating to America. I remember Grandpa talking fondly about them, as he was the only one actively writing to Grand uncle in America. The update of news soon died out when Granduncle passed away in 1977, leaving an ocassional letter or two, annually from Grandaunt. When Grandaunt couldn't write anymore in her later years, the sporadic writing of letters were left to Uncle Charlie, who is the youngest son.

I've never seen any of their faces, except for Uncle Charlie back in December 1996. While Papa has not seen them since 1937, but also met up with Uncle Charlie with me in 1996. It was only Uncle Charlie that Papa was close to, or rather could relate to after 1937, as they were about the same age.

I remember Uncle Charlie very well, because as a student in the States, I used to call him, and we had a rapour which is unlike the ordinary. We have never met, yet we had so much in common and he would be so jovial and funny, making feel like a child, and I'd burst into peals of laughter. I knew what he looked like from the old pictures, and I could see Uncle Charlie in my mind, an older version from that in the picture.

When we finally met during my graduation in 1996, everything fell so nicely into place. My parents, Agnes, Uncle Min & Aunt Nyuk from Canada were there too, and we had a great reunion, and promised that we'll meet up and talk to each other soon. Now 8 years has passed, all of us were too busy with our own lives to make to contacts.

To find out that we are 9 months' too late, it tore our hearts out. I called Uncle Patrick after saying my goodbyes on the phone to Michael. I spoke to Uncle Patrick, introducing myself, telling him why I am calling... and then passed the phone to Papa to speak to Uncle Patrick, and Papa took a deep breath, and tears started to stream down his face, and he could not even speak till seconds later, "Patrick Ko, I am so sad that Charlie Ko passed away" (Ko is a Hakkha word to address a brother who is older than us). I could hear Uncle Patrick's voice cracked when he said he remembered Papa... and then he too, was sobbing. They spoke for a long time, and it was amazing... blood is really thicker than water... 67 years' gap was bridged at that instance between Papa and Uncle Patrick. Uncle Patrick's a Scientist, and he's still working at the age of 76.

After the call to Uncle Patrick, I tried to call Aunt Julia and Uncle Franklin, but I only managed to leave a message in their answering machine. However, I managed to get hold of Aunt Pauline. I did my introductory bits again, and let Papa take over the conversation for a while. Soon, Papa ran out of things to say because she's an aunt! *Sigh* the men in my family are strange... even at times of such! So I took over, and spoke to Aunt Pauline for 2 hours! We hit off instantly, and I knew that Aunt Pauline is easy to love, just like Uncle Charlie. Aunt Pauline said she misses Uncle Charlie, the live wire of the family, and she couldn't take his passing too, as he's the youngest brother. Upon saying that, I couldn't hold back my tears, and I could hear Aunt Pauline's voice cracking, I know then, she too was as distraughted as I was. I was 9 months too late, but at least Aunt Pauline got to say her goodbyes.

The call finally ended, and Papa and I spent moments of silence. Mama joined us, while Francis (my bro) was oblivious and could not feel a thing. It's hurting us so much to have lost Uncle Charlie, but at the back of my mind, I'm glad he went as he wouldn't want to be remembered as someone who is bounded to a wheelchair. Both Michael and I shared this view, but we cannot say that to our parents' generation, who will be really angry at us for saying this. The Chinese believes that it doesn't matter how the condition of the person is, as long has he / she is still alive, they should be happy to be alive. *Sigh*

Both Michael and I understood that Uncle Charlie will always want to be happy and upgoing, and will never want to be of any inconvenience to anyone else. Michael knew that, and tried his best to make him happy from year 2002 (after the accident) till he finally passed on. Michael would drove Uncle Charlie to Virginia every weekend to see Uncle Franklin, and every other day to see either Uncle Patrick, Aunt Pauline, Aunt Grace and Aunt Julia around New York area. Uncle Charlie seemed happy to see his siblings, eventhough wheelchair-bound... they learned to read his expressions when he could not answer whenever they speak and have conversations with him. 'His eyes were always bright, and he knows exactly what's going on all the time, Angela', said Michael. Still, we both know that Uncle Charlie can't wait to go...

Uncle Charlie had a good life, nevertheless... he is well-loved till he passed on. I thought to myself, 'Goodbye Uncle Charlie, I'm sorry that we only tried to look for you after 8 years... I don't know if I'll be able to forgive myself for this. I'm sorry I didn't know earlier... but you'll forgive me, won't you, Uncle Charlie? Goodbye Uncle Charlie, Jesus loves you, and may your soul rest in peace.'