This feeling right now, the state of my being, is vastly different from when I received the news that the doctors had given up, and when they pulled the white cloth over my dad’s face, wheeling him away. It was an uncontrollable sense of helplessness, guilt, and pain that grabbed me. The only thing I could do was cry, and once I cried, I couldn’t stop. It was the hardest to see them wheel him away – a neatly manifested scene of the departure, since he was already in coma and there was no actual “passing away” except for the flatlining of different graphs on the screen. I really could feel then and there, that I lost my dad forever, and it was as if someone stabbed me in the chest. Those things they talked about grief are true. You can feel “pain” very literally, physically.

The short period (about a day, to be exact) between the first flatlining and putting the heart and kidney on life support, and the eventual death was the hardest, even if not as astoundingly painful as the departure. I held out a little hope. But I couldn’t even look at him – he had already slipped into coma, his eyes rolled upward, his face relaxed, lifeless. A deep sleep. Whereas before, when he was under sleeping drugs, I could still see his eyebrows furrowing, his face hardened, in pain. What I saw then, the coma, was irrevocable death, except to his side were machines that still told me he was alive. My family tried to be by his side the whole time, even made me go in, but I just couldn’t take it.

But that was yesterday. Today, I feel an odd mix of relief and numbness. Relief because, I assume, no one has to be in pain anymore. He’s freed from his illness, and everyone else from watching him being ill. I can’t explain the numbness. I fully expected to be writhing in grief, to continue to cry. Nothing happened. The thought that when I come back home, my dad will no longer be at the airport to pick me up, or I will no longer receive his long and unnecessary emails, scares me, but it doesn’t tear me apart. I don’t think I fully register it yet. It still feels like he’s out there somewhere, drinking with his pals. I thought about re-reading his emails (I skimmed a lot of them,naturally, when they were sent to me initially), but couldn’t bring myself to. I would only see the thread with mostly my dad’s emails, and not mine, and the pain might just come back. I don’t wish I could have talked to him before he passed (or before they put the machine in his mouth and he couldn’t talk), because talking about the issues we had over the years would mean revealing to him how severe his condition was, and we didn’t want to. There was no way. And probably, even if we talked about it long before he fell sick, I doubt it would change anything. There will always be regret, and I’m learning to live with mine.

It’s also easier to deal with his absence, since I live abroad and we barely saw each other as it was. It’s easier to think that he might just be somewhere in Vietnam, and I can’t see him because I’ll be in the US. And there will be no emails simply because he forgets to nag me.

I’m still tearing up now and then, which is weird since at the same time the fact that my dad passed away remains clear in my mind without making actual sense – if that makes sense. It’s that feeling that’s been nagging me the past week – why am I here when Ive never been able to go home for Tet. Why is my dad dying when he’s still so young. Why is my dad dying without letting me help. Why is my dad dying, in general.

He does what he did 10 years ago. He left me, again.

It’s one of those things I never thought would happen to me. You know, winning a lottery, having an accident, being famous, dying in a plane crash. All seems to be materials of fiction. Most of all, family members with cancer? Doesn’t it only happen in Korean dramas? I refuse to believe now that there are people who will go through life peacefully without any unexpected tragedy happening to them. That must be it, right? It’s life, after all. Someone must pass, things must happen, and the best you can do is deal with it.

To be fair, I don’t have a particularly close relationship with my dad. My parents divorced when I was young, and I was all for it. Their marriage, though not entirely their fault, was making them both miserable – especially my mom, who I thought was clearly at the short end of stick. I even encouraged my mom to divorce, and left a hateful letter to my father before we moved out of the house. I firmly believed that as a husband, it was his responsibility to trust and protect his wife, which he failed miserably. I don’t – and won’t – ever believe in excuses such as filial piety, or weakness of the heart. A partnership has to be based on trust, and each person has to use their judgment and have the courage to stand up to that judgment. He failed to deliver the right judgment, and did not have to courage to protect whatever sentiment that was left between them, leaving my mom out there for others to hurt (physically, and emotionally). I think it was that thought that broke our emotional relationship, and what remained was, and has always been, a string of filial obligation.

No one enjoys obligation. I always felt reluctant to meet my dad. I knew he thoroughly considered me his daughter, but for some reason, he never seemed to make the effort to see me more than once a month. This is not to rationalize the lack of emotion I felt, or the somewhat estranged relationship that we have. It’s just bare cold facts, and it saddens me to admit so.

Yes, it was sadder for me to realize that we had barely a relationship, than that I rarely got to see him. I remember listening to Luther Vandros’s “Dance with my father” and crying, because – damn, I wish I had that kind of love for my father. I know people who would have killed to just have a dad, or just to see their dad again, and it pains me that I don’t share the same sentiment.

It’s still true today, when I’m trying to grapple with the fact that my dad will soon pass away. We still have to wait for the chemotherapy, and I firmly believe in the power of medicine, but my dad’s family basically treats him as if he was already dead. I’m also not going to lie to myself and say my dad is going to live until he’s 80. If he has 5 more years, we’ll be glad. I worry, I panic a little, but at the same time, I feel myself strangely disconnected. People comfort me and say that it’s fair. It’s ok. You guys weren’t close. It’s ok. I do hope it’s ok.

Funny – as soon as I finished writing the last paragraph, I went to look for my dad’s emails, and started crying. I think he started to make a lot more effort to connect with me when I began studying abroad. He was good about seeing me when I came home for breaks, and regularly emailed me to ask how I was. But I was never good with keeping in touch, even with my mom (she catches me on gchat, otherwise she, like my dad, would have to send several emails before I managed to reply). The crying was for all the regret, all the emails that I should have sent.

[note: sarcasm]

People who write porn don’t actually get laid…

Future…

It’s kind of sad. But it’s ok.

Better things are waiting for me ahead.

I do not like to drink!!!

Is it so hard to live in this society without gulping up a keg of beer every Friday Saturday and Sunday nights? I mean, it can be fun while you are drunk, but you feel like shit afterwards. I can do it maybe once or twice a year, but that’s it.

Or maybe I just don’t like those people.

I’m sick of this, get me out of here.

Now.

I want to write him a postcard. Maybe I should. A year after our fallout, it clicked in my head: I understand perfectly now why he was angry. The thing is, is it at all useful now to say, sorry, I got it? I really got it this time.