I’ve learned a lot over the past couple of weeks about a few things — about my family, about my extended family, about myself, and even about the American culture*, but above all, about my father. The Dead can really facilitate a lot of changes for the Living.
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The progression of thoughts upon hearing the passing of my father went something like this:
WTF? –> What happened? –> How did it happen? –> When? –> Who was there? –> WTF?
And then various stages of grieving process start to take place: denial, anger… blah blah and then finally acceptance. While I had no reason to go through the “anger” stage per se, I’ve had to take the “acceptance” stage rather quickly for practical reasons**.
It’s probably not healthy, but I simply haven’t got the time to be completely depressed about what happened… I tried getting back to work right away, but I was always distracted with thoughts and regrets lingering in my head. A man simply can’t work like this.
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It seemed too early to think about what to do with my father’s belongings and assets he left behind in Indonesia where he worked, but my uncles had the foresight to think ahead and had already raised a few questions. My brother thought it’s ridiculous to think about that while we were still grieving. But such as the reality of death — inheritance (and the said taxes), legal battles on ownership claims of not-easily-documentable assets, people who owe him money, or allegedly loaned him money… etc.
I wish I could offer some help, but my pathetic immigration predicament has squarely put me in the “useless” column on their list. And that’s just how I’d been feeling — useless.
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Grace and I have been talking about our “exit strategy”. And I think we’ve reached a comfortable solution with a few wrinkles to be ironed out. While we don’t have any details to offer, at least we now have a more focused direction and practical steps to achieve our objectives (except for the wrinkles).
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My youngest uncle took a trip to Indonesia. He went there not only to tidy up some loose end, but also to investigate on what really caused my father’s heart attack, a condition novel in the Chu family tree. His quest brought back some very sad, as well as, some very bright stories about my father, the man and the Buddha that he was. He spent his life keeping many things to himself that others would have been very loud-mouth about (i.e. me!). We now wish he hadn’t been so quiet about all those wonderful (as well as crazy) things that was happening around him.
Maybe I’ll blog about those stories if I can find a way good to tell them without doing them injustice.
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I got some closure after having learned that an uncle-in-law recorded the funeral. He came last week and handed me the two discs of DVDs he made from the funeral (as well as a wedded that my dad attended). The moment he handed me the DVDs, I felt much better already (though to-date, I still haven’t the gut to pop them into my computer to watch them yet). But at least now I can feel like I was somehow there to share the pain and grief of everyone else who attended.
* I had no idea it’s an American custom to offer food to the family of the deceased as a way to show condolence. As soon as Grace’s mommy group learned the news, offers to bring food and other things started pouring in. After having spent fourteen years in America, it took an unfortunate event for me to learn this.
** The day that I learned the news, I found myself having to reply to a client with emails on this project they still owe me a lot of money for, the money I knew I’d need pretty soon. And I needed to reply those emails to get their asses moving on getting their part done so they can pay me. It’s been a couple of weeks, and I am still chasing after that money!