Parenthood: Week 106 – The Moment I Realized I Was A Father

This story of fatherhood is set in Taiwan during my maternal grandmother’s funeral. Click here for my travelogue about this experience. 

Looking out the floor to ceiling windows of our hotel room, I gazed upon the view of downtown Taipei. Stretched out before was a sea of modern progress.  The Taipei 101 building was in clear sight and cranes all around raised buildings towards the sky.

Even though I was exhausted, I woke up before my alarm. I was still jet-lagged and not yet recovered from the over 15-hour journey from Chicago to Taipei.  It was only our second day in Taiwan. However even if we had been there for a week, I still probably wouldn’t have sleep very well, because today was the day that my family was going to bury my Po-po (maternal grandmother).

Diana was still asleep and it was too early to go down for breakfast so I sat on the couch looking out the window.  I felt lost.  I had too much time on my hands and I didn't know what I needed to do to prepare for the day emotionally.

I eventually made my way to the bathroom and went through my morning routine. Actions that were so normal, like brushing my teeth and shaving, almost felt wrong knowing the nature of the coming day. I comforted myself knowing that I wasn’t alone. Diana was here.

From the moment we heard the news that my Po-po was dying, she supported me. She helped plan this stressful trip. And when we bought me a suit that we thought I might need for the funeral, she insisted that the alterations be done quickly so that we could have it ready for the trip.  She stood up for me when I didn’t have it in me to stand up for myself.

Because of Diana I had made it this far, so I knew I’d be okay.

As I left the bathroom, Diana was sitting up in bed. She got up and put on her glasses. Diana hates wearing her glasses and only wears them in the transition before going to bed and getting up in the morning.  But I kind of think she looks cute in them. As she slipped them on and gave me a hug, I felt the optimism and kind spirit in her embrace I saw in her eyes ten years earlier when we first met.

She went into the bathroom to get ready for the day. Instead of changing out of my pajamas, I found myself sitting in the same couch looking out of the window watching the sunrise over the mountains.

A couple minutes later, I heard the bathroom door open and felt Diana's presence coming closer. I turned to face her and she told me with her love and excitement in her eyes that we were going to have a baby. We immediately embraced, I told her that I loved her and she told me that she loved me. I continued to hug her as we sat down.

I don’t know what’s the happiest moment of my life. The many different joyful moments, I’ve been blessed to experience have held different meanings in my life. So it’s difficult to compare, but I will say that finding out this news of the baby that would grow into Ollie is one of the happiest. I didn’t quite have words at that moment (which is a big deal for me). In that silence as we held each other, the sun finally reached it’s apex high up in the sky and everything in my life came into perspective.

On this day, I would say goodbye to my Po-po, and Diana and I would welcome this child into our hearts. These two moments, the beginning of life and the end of life, frame our lives and give our actions, our thoughts and our feelings meaning.

After a long joyful silence, we stood up, talked briefly, agreeing not to tell anyone our news and got ready for the day. We didn’t speak of our child during the long busy day. Our focus was on my family and my Po-po. However, I couldn’t help but hold Diana’s hand a little bit tighter when helping her off the bus and check in often with her making sure she was comfortable. As much as I felt I wanted to be there for her, Diana as always was the rock I needed for myself and for our child.

Ollie will never meet his paternal great-grandparents, but I feel blessed that he was with us to share in that trip to Taiwan to say goodbye to his great-Po-po. When I look at Ollie, sometimes I think about my Po-po and instead of feeling sad, I feel happy knowing that he shared this experience with us.

I'm excited for the day that I will tell Ollie about his trip to Taiwan.  I’ll tell him about the long flight, and the weird toilet with over twenty buttons.  But most importantly, I will tell him about the love that my family shares because of my Po-po, which led his life and joy we share with each other every single day of our lives.

Taiwan Travelogue: Day 4 - Reflections

When I was a toddler, I figured out how to slide down the stairs on my stomach. One time I was doing this, I took hold of the end of a toilet paper roll and went down the stairs with it in my hand.

My aunt laughed as she told my mom and my wife this story as we sat in a Starbucks in a food court. My wife shared some similar stories with my aunt and mom like the time one of her younger brothers sprayed baby powder all over the room explaining, “I didn’t know I wasn’t suppose to do that.”

Our last full day in Taiwan was spent with family . . . shopping.  My mom took my wife and I, first thing the morning, to a gold smith shop where my aunt met up with us and then we went to a mall. We bought some baby clothes for my niece and I found a nice sports coat.  Through it all, we shared some great stories.

That afternoon my wife and I met up with my cousins and we explored the shopping area at the bottom of the Taipei 101 Tower and later went up to the top of that building. While the view was nice, going up the world’s fastest elevator really isn’t that much fun.

Hanging out with my cousins was a lot of fun. Diana and I had met up with each of those cousins in the past couple years but this was the first time we all got to hang out as a group. We had a great time, mostly being silly and pointing out odd things that we saw in stores and randomly sharing a box of macaroons.

When I think about the past four days, I feel admiration for my family.

You look at people outside your family for inspiration and you wish you could emulate them. But when you see your family being strong in difficult situations, you come to believe that you share these same qualities. 

The good in my family is the good within myself.

The death of my grandmother is not an ending for my family. Through the lives that we lead, new unions of marriage, and new generations being born, the story of my family continues.

I’m not saying that the last four days changed my life, but they meant more to me than I can express. It may be a while before I can fully understand all that I’ve experienced, but I know it all felt right.

When I hugged my mom goodbye before leaving for the airport, that simple gesture that once felt so ordinary, felt special.  It was like the spirits of my grandparents and my ancestors came together and surrounded us with love.

Taiwan Travelogue: Euglogy For My Grandmother

On Saturday 15th, 2012 in Taipei, Taiwan, I shared my thoughts about my grandmother along with my cousins.  While the experience was difficult the writing and sharing of these words was important for my family and I.

I've started this school year talking to my students about choices. Every day we make thousands of choices, from what pants to put on in the morning to whether or not we acknowledge a homeless person who asks us for money as we walk by.

Like children, we don't alway put a lot of thought into our actions and the effect they have on the people around us. In the same way we often overlook the way that other people's choices effect us. For me, this is what this day is about.

The choices my grandmother made resonate in all of our lives. From the seemingly insignificant to the immediately profound, she chose for herself a life full of love and family and through these choices taught us all how to be a family.

I love how I have a cousin who is half Swiss and an aunt in Taiwan, and while the miles between us make it more difficult to stay connected, it's makes it that much more meaningful that we choose to be hear today as a family.

When I was in elementary school grandmother chose to come and help teach me and me classmates how to make paper cranes. When I was married she chose to come to our wedding and share in that amazing day, and whenever my mother visited her she would chose to go shopping and make sure to have a gift for my mom to bring home to Diana.

I think about these things and I know that I'm a better person because of them, and while she may not have not thought too much about these choices, they changed my life. In this way her choice to foster relationships with all of us has sent ripples throughout our lives and led to us making the profound choice to share this day together as one. In this way, grandmother is always with us and through her life we are all connected.

So like my grandmother, choose to love, choose to be a family and choose to remember and honor the ones that come before. Because it is in understanding how the choices of the past effect our lives can we be mindful of how our choices can change the lives of the people around us for the better.

Taiwan Travelogue: Day 3 - Grateful

What happens to your possessions after you die? The ancient Egyptian Pharaohs packed all their stuff away with them in their pyramids but most of us don’t have that luxury.

As we started going through my grandmother’s positions, it felt weird and almost sacrilegious. But then it started to make sense. What was my family going to do with all of this stuff? What would my grandmother prefer, for the family to take things of her that they wanted or for this stuff to be given away to charity or thrown away?

So all of the women in my family went to my grandmother’s bedroom and looked through her clothes trying things on and claiming clothes to take home. My cousin and I started looking through the curio cabinet in the living room.

There was a lot of really interesting things in that cabinet. We found a metal toy car from the early 1910s, honorary gifts for my grandfathers years of service in various organizations and souvenirs from all over the world. I found a small stone carved into two dogs playing with each other that reminded me of Buffy that I took for my own.

I went in and checked on how Diana and the rest of the women in my family were doing. Diana had found a couple sweaters and a old fashioned but very nice wool suit jacket. As I was looking through this stuff my aunt started pulling out my grandmother’s numerous handbags and I instantly recognized a small brown one as my grandmothers.

I never really thought about her handbags or even consciously noticed them but seeing that bag immediately brought and image into my minds eyes of my grandmother holding that bag.

My mom took this bag into the main living room and started going through the bag. She explained to my wife and I that my grandmother always made sure to have certain things in her handbag. There was a small container of tiger balm, a small packet of tissue, three of four plastic bags just in case there was extra food from a restaurant she wanted to keep, and emergency money hidden away in some corner of the purse.

My mom explained how she learned to carry most of these things in her purse all of the time from her mom. As I thought about the kleenix packet, lip balm, and emergency money hidden away in my work bag, I realized that I was as much my mother’s son as my mom was her mother’s daughter.

That evening we went to my grandmother’s favorite sushi restaurant. It was a authentic sushi bar that only had about twenty seats. As soon as we walked in one of the sushi chefs asked my uncle where my grandmother was and he pointed up and explained that she had passed away.

At the end of the meal we had miso soup. This soup was authentically made with random pieces of left over seafood creating and fresh and subtle mix of flavors. My mom explained to me that this was my grandmother’s favorite dish. As I inhaled the aroma of the soup and tasted the smooth broth, it felt like she was sharing her world with me.

For that experience and that day, I am truly grateful.

Cultural Weirdness in Taipei

To the left of the toilet in our hotel bathroom was this panel.  My favorite button was "oscillating."  I actually didn't use any of the buttons except for the ones across the top.  It was all just so intimidating.   

Mom, two kids, and cups of hot soup, all on one scooter.  I know Americans can sometimes go a little overboard with safety things, but really Taipei? 

That's a normal size tea cup and a normal sized fork.  Those little glasses are Chinese shot glasses.  They were about the size of thimble.  When I use them I felt like a giant.  It was awesome. 

Taiwan Travelogue: Day 2 - The Service

As I positioned the chopsticks between my fingers, I looked down at the steel tray holding my grandmothers cremated remains. I always imagined that cremated remains were a fine grey powder but instead they were white and in pieces.  Some of these fragments were the size of a coin while others were the size of a rosebud.

The chopsticks were larger than normal, almost a foot in length. I carefully gripped a piece with the chopsticks and used my other hand to brace the middle of the chopsticks. I methodically moved my hands towards the urn and gently placed the remains inside, put the chopsticks down carefully and took a step back to join the rest of my family.

All of my grandmother's children, grandchildren and spouses who were present took part in moving the remains. Then the person working at the crematorium placed the rest of the remains into the urn, sealed it carefully, place the container in a embroidered bag and carefully gave the package to my uncle.  It was now the late afternoon and it was time to leave the place of worship where my grandmothers service was held and her remains were cremated for one more important trip to go on with my grandmother.

My mother waiting for the service to begin.

We arrived earlier that morning in a funeral service facility in Taipei. There were many different rooms in the grounds where numerous services were held. As we got there, workers were bustling around moving flowers, chairs and carpets setting up services in a hurry. Once we got organized, the person presenting our service showed us our part in the ceremony.

We were split up by gender and put in a specific order according to our station in he family and birth order. The family stood in the front facing the audience for the whole ceremony acting as hosts.

After a speaker talked about my grandmothers life, different groups of people lined up in the aisle facing a portrait of my grandmother and bowed to her spirit in prayer. First they bowed with incense in their hands three times. After the incenses were collected and they vowed three more times, then at the the end people bowed all the way to the ground touching their foreheads to the ground three times.

The groups went in order of closeness to my grandmother starting with her children and their spouses, then grandchildren, cousins, family friends and so on.

Waves of people in different groups came up to honor my grandmother. There was not enough room for all of these people to sit in the room so many people lined up outside to pay their respects. After each of these groups bowed to my grandmother, they bowed to us.

My grandfather was active in the Taipei Rotary club and served as the president. My grandmother and him made many lifelong friends through this organization. They had a sister chapter in Japan and one member wrote letters back and forth to my grandmother. My uncles were concerned about him finding out about my grandmothers death because he was very old and they weren't sure he could travel and they knew he would try. He found out and flew in barely making it to the ceremony on time.

Even though I didn't know who he was at the time, I knew there was something special about this man when he paid his respect to my grandmother. He was the oldest man there and had a profound look of reverence on his face. As he left the room, my uncle chased after him and handed him an envelope.

Inside the envelope, there was a letter my grandmother had been writing to him that she had not yet finished. In that letter were the final words between life-long friends.

After the ceremony my family was led to the back of the room where we viewed my grandmothers body. The guest followed our family around the room and once the guest were done, my family lined up. Then we followed the coffin as it was wheeled to the crematorium.

We held another small ceremony in the lobby of that building and then the coffin was wheeled into another larger room with ten cremation chambers, five on each side of the wall. We stood in the entryway and watched as the coffin was carefully pushed into the chamber.

For the next couple hours, we sat in a waiting room as my grandmother was cremated. We ate some lunch, talked a little bit and tried to pass the time. We weren't as loud and energized as we were the night before at dinner but we managed to enjoy each others company after such an intense experience.

I wasn't really prepared to be so close to the process of the cremation. I had seen bodies at funerals but I never saw a coffin enter an cremation chamber or had handle remains. While this was difficult, there was a high level of respect involved. The fact that we witnessed these parts of the process meant that the people working there had to take great care in handling my grandmother. It felt like we were truly taking care of her in death to remember how she took care of us in her life.

Our whole family took an hour bus ride to our families' Buddhist temple. The nuns received the urn and after a ceremony of chanting and prayer my grandmother's urn was placed below my grandfather's. They shared a cabinet in the wall of the building. As we walked by my mother told me that her parents were finally together and to say goodbye.

Looking to the urns, I said goodbye and felt for the first time that day, a feeling of happiness. Part of it was the calm serenity of the nuns and the beauty of the temple but more than that it was knowing that my grandparents were finally back together.

Standing outside the temple, the grey overcast skies didn't seem so sad and as I heard my family talking, I felt ready to live the rest of my life.

Visions Of Quanyin

Quanyin is the most worshipped female religious figure in the world.  She is a Bodhisattva, a human who has reached enlightenment.  Quanyin is a symbol of compassion and her image is found throughout Asian culture.  On my travels to Taiwan, I took these pictures of her ever-present image and comforting presence. 

Taiwan Travelogue: Day 1 - It Can't Rain All Of The Time.

There was silence as my mom, dad, brother, Diana and I walked into late grandmothers condo in Taipei. We greeted our aunts, uncles and cousins quietly and then stood there. One of my aunts, broke the silences "come on, talk to each other." With that the room relaxed, smiles came to people's faces and we began to talk.

After a settling in we did a prayer ceremony and presented a meal of my grandmothers favorite foods in front of a picture if her. We stayed in the condo for a little longer to let her spirit enjoy the food.

Then we went to the hospital where my grandmothers body was being kept and did another prayer ceremony. Again, there was a muted energy. It was like we all wanted to laugh and enjoy each others company but we felt a need to hold together a feeling of reference. While the prayers were serious before and after different people reconnected, shared stories and laughed.

Afterwards lunch at one of our families favorite restaurants the smiles came were no longer held back and the laughter was let loose. It was liked we all stopped trying so hard to act "proper" and revel in the joy of sharing an incredible meal with each other and being together for the first time in over a decade.

After lunch, my mom finally seemed to exhale. She had been in Taipei for almost a week before Diana and I had arrived.  In the grief of her mom passing hadn't really eaten well. I don't if it was the food or the family that caused to her to finally eat but that lunch was the first real meal she had in Taiwan.

After lunch, we split up and my immediate family hit the hotel bar and then the mall.  Diana has small feet which makes shoe shopping in America difficult, but in Taiwan she has more average sized feet so instead of there being a couples of shoes that fit in a store like in America, everything in the store fit Diana.

We got back together as a family for a magnificent traditional Chinese dinner all twenty-one of us sat around a huge table experiencing a meal, full of toasts, amazing food and lots of laughter.

What are you suppose to do when you grieve? How do you act around your loved ones? I'm not sure any of us knew. We were all trying to do the right thing. In the middle of dinner it all started make sense. Grieving for the death of grandmother was about living in the moment, being present and enjoying life.

Today was a reminder of why we grieve. There is no joy, no comfort that is like spending time with family. When someone in a family leaves, we need to be serious and respectful, but we also need to live life to honor the joy that person continues to bring to our lives.

Taiwan Travelogue: Dreams Of Sushi

Last weekend my family went to my late grandmother's favorite sushi restaurant.  This was one of the greatest meals I've ever had in my life.  The sushi chefs prepared one piece at time with incredible artistry. 

Taiwan Travelogue: On The Plane To Taiwan

To honor the life and the passing of my grandmother, my wife, Diana and I journeyed to my parents homeland of Taipei, Taiwan.  This post is the first part of the journey I wrote on the plane. 

9/12
"Diana, my grandmother died."

As those words left my mouth, I felt a sudden intense pain.  It felt like something crushed my heart filling me with an overwhelming feeling sadness.  As I collapsed onto my bed feeling tears blind my vision, Diana's arms surrounded me in strength and love holding me together as I felt myself falling apart.

Then it was over and the reality that my life was forever changed began to sink in. 

When I heard the news about my other grandparents dying it didn't hit my this hard.  There was more of a dull pain that lasted for a longer period of time.  I don't know why this was different with my maternal grandmother.  Maybe it was because she was my last grandparent or maybe it was because no one expected her to pass away.  

I'm writing this sitting on a plane on the way to Taiwan.  My grandmother passed away last Tuesday, eight days ago.  The funeral is this Saturday (9/15).  Thankfully the funeral was arranged for a week after her death so that we had time to to get prepared for this trip.  

There are so many different things that go through your mind when a grandparent dies. You have your own grief to work through but even more challenging is your parents grief.  When you are kid, your parents are superheroes and you think they can handle anything.  That illusion disappears in the teen years.  Even though you know your parents are human beings with flaws and imperfections, part of you holds on to the idea that they are invincible, and moments like this remind you of their humanity.

My parents never stopped being someone's children.  Even after my brother and I were born.  This isn't something I thought -bout growing up, but it's true.  We all hold different roles to people in our lives.  We are friends, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins.  But now my mom has no one in this world knows her as a daughter, and now there is no one alive who calls me their grandchild.  

Yes, I'm loosing this part of identity, the part of me that is a grandchild, but last Spring, my beautiful niece entered this world who looks at me in a way no one else in the world does: as an uncle.  

No, this doesn't even things out and it doesn't bring comfort but it feels like somehow, this is what life is all about.

I believe that endings are what makes things meaningful.  That doesn't mean I don't dread them and that doesn't mean I don't fear death.  Death is the one inevitable in our lives.  It's an experience that we all share.  It touches all of our lives.  However, the universality of death doesn't make it any easier to cope with and understand.  

There's so much in this world that I don't understand.  And I try to make sense of everything that happens because it feels like if I don't try, it will all slip away.  This isn't a rational fear, it just how I deal with life.  Trying to find meaning doesn't always lead to answers but the struggle always helps us know ourselves.

Right now as this plane flys over the pacific, my mom is waiting for me in a hotel in Taipei.  I'm not sure what I'm going to say to her when I see her.  But I know there will be a hug, probably a couple tears, and the feeling of home and family being in the presences of my mother as her son.