In the Instance of Death

They chose an expensive looking altar for my father. Everything else there was already carefully planned by him after he witnessed his own mother abruptly leave him. The only thing missing from his careful plans for the afterlife, was the physical altar that would be on display at the family burial grounds. Maybe he was getting to it, then that’s when the heart attack came and that’s when my mother called me and that’s when I decided to ignore the call. Maybe if my mother texted me first that my father died instead of immediately calling, I would’ve picked up the phone. Maybe not. 

As I stare at the altar after the service with my mother and my sister and my father’s older sister and his best employees along with his closest business partners, I think about the tedious process of death. The Chinese require the mourning immediate family to keep an incense burning for three days and three nights. The family also must be void of anything that resembles joy for at least three months, including any articles of red clothing, jewelry and any makeup that is beyond minimal. Another common ritual is that once the flesh is incinerated, leaving behind only bones, the immediate family is to pick up the skeletal remains of their loved one and stick them in a box-like urn, with each bone fragment representing a form of good health in the afterlife. After shaking hands with people I barely knew in front of my father’s grey corpse encased in glass, I was forced to pick up a piece of what the mortician decided is a piece of my father’s skull, so that he would “have good mental health and make good decisions in heaven!” It felt like a thin meringue between my wooden chopsticks. And to think, that this is all that is left behind of the man who once beat sense and humility into me when I was thirteen. Now, my father is just some frail leftover fragments of a charred body between an eating utensil. 

I continue to stare at the altar as his “friends” leave after staying an additional 93 seconds to pay their final respects to his ashes. My mother has her head down as she stands in public for the first time without any makeup nor jewelry on, while my sister holds her hand. Must be nice, supporting each other. 

I stayed longer than I intended to in my father’s hometown after the funeral. Per Chinese traditional mourning regulations, I wasn’t allowed to leave the house, but plenty of people visited to pay their respects to my family. Each visitor treated me like I was some kind of exalted being, thanks to my father’s reputation. Even Uncle Zhou visited, which was most likely his pathetic way of apologizing for falling out with my father over business disagreements. A lot of Uncle Zhou’s visited, along with Uncle Yang’s and Uncle Song’s, all of which are people who were either indebt to my father or were in active business with him before his death. People he has only ever given to with the expectation of taking from, many of which have only stolen from him. They all came with apologies for our loss, reaffirmations that he was a good man and nothing more than that. My father taught me at age five that there is no such thing as a true friend. Maybe that wasn’t so much of a lesson as it was a warning. 

Many faces I didn’t recognize also visited and intruded on my family’s supposed mourning, but it didn’t really bother me-- the house was only a home to my father and mother, who lived here year round. My childhood homes have been all sold. Once I turned of age and didn’t need a semi-stable and constant place to live, (for my education) those homes lost their purpose to him. This house in China though, is a home with the elements of home, yet never felt like a home: it establishes a feeling of grandiosity, not comfort. I only reside in this house during summers and winters, for when my father demanded me to come visit so that he could present his “successful and close knit family” to his friends at business dinners. I wonder how many of these uncles know that my dad lied about where my sister and I went to college. I’ll never step foot in this house for him again, since he’s dead now. How odd. Maybe he did miss me sometimes and that’s why he wanted me home. But then why was he more eager to show me off than spend time with me?

  It’s four am now and my sister walks by en route to her room, but stops to stare at me when she sees my figure sitting in my father’s spot on the couch. A satisfying soft, yet crisp crunch of the apple slices my mother skinned for me prior to locking herself in her room, dances in the tension between my sister and I. My sister first calls me out for eating fruit on the white wool couch and then begins to chastise me for being so cold at the funeral ceremony. You could’ve at least pretended to be more upset, for the sake of not looking insane, she says. I can tell from the way she clenches her left fist while biting her lip that she wants to lecture me more but couldn’t bring herself to. If anything, my sister should be the one without tears, seeing that my father put her through the most. He drove her to the brink of death via a slit wrist due to emotional abuse and then would swiftly wave money as a pathetic apology without words. While I frolicked into pursuing my dreams in the United States, my sister had her dreams made for her by him in China. I wonder how my sister can cry so easily for my father’s lost life when at the same time, in many ways, he caused her to lose her own. He’s never done anything inherently evil to me and was far more patient with my childhood than he was for hers… Then again, he only visited me in my childhood rather than stay, as he did in my sister’s life. 

I'm eventually left alone on the couch again. In the distance, I can hear my mom sobbing. At least this time she’s crying for him and not crying about him. I’ve spent too many late nights listening to her sobbing and exclaiming about how my father made it blatantly clear through his actions that he never loved her the same way she loves him. After she finishes wailing, my mother would then quietly disappear for days. She’d always come back though, through the front door with a tired smile, groceries and a new white gold Cartier ring from my father’s bank account. We all knew that she bought herself when she realized that she was sad over nothing that she could change. Looking back, I find myself thinking about it too. Did he ever love her? Or maybe the better question is: did he ever know how to love her? Maybe he did try, just like how he tried visiting me in my adolescent years, yet always failed to show up when it counted and bought me pearls for redemption. Whenever he would go into a violent fury over small mistakes I made, he’d often leave Michelin Star level takeout outside my door, but then get mad again once he finds the food untouched the next morning. On the days I caved in to hunger, all I felt was betrayal from my dependent physical being, who depends physically on him. Like a dog in a home that it did not choose. 

The taste of crisp apple, unwarranted guilt, expired bitterness and a strange hint of forgiveness sits on the tip of my tongue. Is this confusion or involuntary post-death sympathy? The apples taste different now and so I put them down on a nearby coffee table, staying in my position that was formerly his on the soft couch. Despite my convoluted thoughts, the skin beneath my eyes stay dry. The man who created my world has left me with desiccated tear ducts and memories of a muddled supposed paternal love.  

The sound of my sister's door slamming from down the hall graciously distracts me from my thoughts. I can now hear her cries mixed with my mother’s behind the closed doors. I think they’re crying for my father now, rather than about him.

I tap on the Notes app on my phone. I once read that writing down emotions can help you do some healing of sorts. Identifying the feeling was difficult enough, but writing it down and letting it exist was like slitting my own throat to me. Soothingly suicidal. I don’t know who these words are for, but I make sure to type them out in the two languages I know. 

对不起

sorry.