I thought about my father this afternoon. I suddenly realized that I don’t know much about him at all. He passed away when I was around fifteen, I think. Before that he was sick most of the time. I remember him walking me to school – before he fell ill - probably when I was in Grade 1 or 2. I remember his cigarettes – 555. I remember that he had thick hair, and that sometimes he dyed it black. He liked white, short-sleeved shirts. He never wore black because it was the colour of mourning. Even now, whenever I choose a shirt, black is out of the question. My father had dentures. He told me that it was because of an evil watermelon seed. From then on, I meticulously dug the seeds out of my watermelon before biting into it.
Once there was a big portrait of grandpa, I don’t remember where. So I asked what grandpa was like. He said grandpa was a huge man, and when father was small he would sit on grandpa’s lap. I asked him what his childhood was like. He said he used to wade a small river to get to school. And after school he would explore the backyard (somehow I imagined a railway). Sometimes he caught cockroaches, roasted it (I imagined a small twig as the skewer) and ate it (Eeuw…)

He had stroke, three times. During each and every episode, he fought valiantly. As soon as he was able to, he would crawl out of bed and moved around the house. Family and friends helped him learn to walk again. He exercised religiously. It was a losing battle, though. In the end, there wasn’t much left of my father. He couldn’t get out of bed at all. He couldn’t speak clearly. What he did say didn’t make much sense. He didn’t recognize any of us. Despite it all, his eyes were never dim. They always shone, sometimes a bit wildly. When at last the light dimmed, Mom knew that the end was near. She called all of us to sit around the bed. We all prayed. My father closed his eyes. His breath became fainter and fainter. Then it stopped. Now what I remember most about my father is his fighting spirit, his courage and his spirit to live. (This ending sounds like an essay. Yuck. I’ll edit it in the future, maybe.)