Posts Tagged → Death

I am remembering Scotty.

More than a week ago, my family terrier, Scotty, died suddenly and under very challenging circumstances. He was 9 years old.

Upon hearing the news of this death, I felt mired in melancholy. There were very few things that I loved in life more than playing “catch” with that dog – “catch” being a misnomer. What we played was more like, “Chase me mother fucker because you’re not getting this god damn ball.” In play, I somehow found incredible joy in being annoyed by this 10-pound asshole of a dog.

I often think it is silly to feel intense sadness at the death of an animal, especially amidst so much human pain in the world. However, Scotty was a dog that joined a very human family and remained family despite our hefty imperfections. He lived through the cycle of working class life – job losses, a dearth of money, more job losses, divorce, a destructive hurricane that destroyed much of what my family worked for, and imminent financial uncertainty. Despite living through a household of 4 that gradually dwindled in presence as he aged, Scotty was never angry. All he ever wanted to do was play “catch”.

Scotty died on a Wednesday after his health quickly deteriorated. My mother found him still warm, but absent of breathe, laying on the ground in the wing of our house that he is never in – the hallway leading to my room and my sister’s room. He was alone.

“I think it’s because he loved you two so much,” my mom said to my sister and I over the phone. If this is true, we were only there 1-2 times a year. And yet, he still loved us despite it all – always waiting for us to play “catch”.

In my grief, I have found myself ruminating a lot about time. Time has been unrelenting in its quickness – we are now more than halfway through 2018 and I am closer to 32 than I am to 31. Everyday, I am reminded of how time travels faster than I can process and, a times, handle. I hear it in the way my parents sound on the phone. I see it when I look at a clock wherein the hours have transpired, but my writing has not. I feel it in the financial concerns I harbor about my family’s future. Playing with Scotty was a way to stop time because he was never fixated about the past, had no obsession with the future, and only concerned himself with the resolute urgency of now – with ball, ball, ball, “catch”, “catch”, “catch”.

On the Friday after his death, I drove home after a long week of thinking about time, guilt, and sadness. On my way home, I noticed that the San Francisco Bay was blanketed in a magnificent, late summer sunset. It was a brilliant palette of rouge blending effortlessly into a hue of powder blue. The sunset was oddly late for an August evening and it lasted from the moment I walked out of my office, continued through my 10-mile traverse across California’s longest bridge, and remained as I inched closer to the San Francisco skyline where I met my partner. We watched the sun fade slowly as we ate dinner from a hilltop. I was convinced that it was Scotty.

“Thanks for the sunset, Scotty. You’re a good boy,” I said to no one.

When I visited Peru last year, I became infatuated with the country – the food, the biodiversity, and its rich indigenous history. I especially loved the country’s strong reverence for dogs. Peruvians believe that when humans pass away, it’ll be dogs that guide them across the river to the after-life.

I am not a religious person, but I am excited about the idea of seeing Scotty again, at a bend of treacherous river, with a ball in his mouth ready to play “catch”. I’m not sure how helpful we will both be in that situation given our talents (or lack thereof), but what’s the worse that can happen? We’re together, already dead and won’t be worried about time.

I am remembering A-Po.

Early Sunday morning, my grandmother (A-po) passed away in a Los Angeles area nursing home.  Today, she will be buried in California after 92 years of life – an adolescence spent in southern China, a stint as a homemaker turned candy and fashion shop owner in central Vietnam, a Cantonese and Vietnamese speaking refugee in the America.  From the fragments that I have managed to piece together, all of these moves were provoked by war.  I can trace the thematic element of loss and exile in my grandmother’s life, but the most immediate memories of my grandmother are more sensory than historic sentimentality.

I grew up in a large Chinese-Vietnamese family – my grandmother had five sons and five daughters.  Consequently, my formative memories of effective familial communication and meaningful gatherings include, but are not limited to:  My aunties and A-po screaming Cantonese at each other in a Vietnamese supermarket parking lot over things like the number of shopping carts we should push. A-po’s intimidating and commanding tone of voice that would state, with finality, declarations like, “It’s IMPROPER for a ‘young lady’ to go into a man’s house!”  The hours of taking over 100 pictures at reunions with no less than ten cameras in every conceivable configuration of family (a picture with just the aunties, a picture with just the uncles, a picture with the aunties AND the uncles, a picture with A-po, a picture with just the grandchildren, a picture of the unmarried grandchildren where they are chided throughout the picture taking process about being unmarried, a picture of just the babies, a picture of the unmarried grandchildren holding the babies, etc.)

I remember the Christmas shopping excursions for A-po that usually resulted in my tearing through a JC Penney’s sales rack for any shirt covered in multi-colored sequins.  I remember that, among the few words of English she knew, A-po could say “Sprite” – her beverage of choice on airplanes.  I remember how she smelled of tiger balm, herbal oils, and the Capri Slim cigarettes that she smoked in contemplation after my grandfather’s (A-gung) death from cancer.

It has been week of surreal irony – my family and I have been exchanging memories of her life, yet A-po died in an excruciating process of un-remembering.  In what we now believe to be dementia induced by Alzheimer’s, A-po spent the last decade of her life eating food she could not taste, dreaming perhaps of things she would not remember, and being visited by people she could no longer recognize.

It feels tragic.  You live this life of survival, of ten children, over twenty grandchildren, and about a dozen great-grandchildren.  Of China, Vietnam, and America.  Of such culturally ingrained conviction that you would lecture sweet cousin Linh on being “improper.”  Of love, war, homemade Vietnamese cha and carbonated drinks on airplanes to and from California.  Of birthdays, cancers, cigarettes, Cantonese, holidays, joy, nostalgia, and strength.  And then slowly, you forget how much salt you should be putting in your food, the name of your daughters or how to come back home.  People stop visiting you not because they don’t love you anymore, but because when they say, “A-po,”you don’t know who that is.

Yet, for all the discussion of Alzheimer’s, there have been stories of her jade earrings and bracelets (a few of which she would sell to clients at Temple straight from her purse), AquaNet styled hair buns she wore to countless mah-jong games, and her 80th birthday bash in Houston.  As my family has reminded me over this past week, perhaps the only way to counter a forgotten legacy is through remembrance.

– Jenny.