Everyone has flaws including my father. Several years ago I might have chosen a gold charm bracelet over paying for my father's medical expenses. Furthermore, we weren't exactly seeing eye to eye or in talking terms. What caused the sudden 180 degree shift in my attitude?
Growing up or adulting is tough. I was surrounded by overachievers who either graduated with a PhD at 25 years old or retired by 30 years old to travel the world. Indirectly, I was compared to the relative who owns a public listed company or the one who received a fully funded scholarship to Oxford. In case you still haven't grasp your way around the world, the brand name of the university you attend matters a ton.
The problem here is our generation gap is too distinct. My parents should never conceived another child at forty years old. They couldn't even handle three existing ones that well. Sure, he worked hard to provide for us but he was too busy to comprehend that success requires uncompromising "grooming" (more like tough love 🤣) because we inherited some faulty genes from my mom. He thought talents simply grew on trees. Like him, we will surely find our way around.
For me, everything was a struggle. I especially so struggled at Mandarin and Mathematics because no one prepared me in advance for anything. Other kids my age were either first born or the only child of professional working parents. As a result of that I always had to learn the hard way hence ate plenty of "candy canes" (caning) before finding my way around.
The working environment was so competitive that I sometimes questioned my sanity and even the purpose of my existence. A student at my workplace committed suicide after failing his medical studies in Ireland. He was just one semester short of completing a Science degree. He could not handle the stress and shame since his entire family members are prominent medical professionals.
One of the toughest trials of my life was going to the morgue to identify the body of my late brother. My second brother died from falling off a building. Unsure it was a suicide or homicide. As he had a gambling addiction problem thanks to fail parenting and overindulgence, a classic example in patriarchal Chinese families, it was hardly a surprise if creditors accidentally dropped him while they tried threatening him.
Anyway, the next mess I had to handle was collecting DNA samples for paternity test. The story goes like this. One fine day a woman turned up and claimed she had an out of wedlock son with my dead brother. So my father suddenly had a grandson. Shocking as it sounded I gathered all my strengths and resources to get the paternity test completed. After confirming the status of my nephew, my late brother's social securities were handed over to them. From then onwards, my father looked at me with completely different set of lens. Until then, I was the useless underdog who only secured a PhD scholarship from a top 100 university.
In case you found my story a little too dramatic to be real, Jane Fonda's mom committed suicide in an asylum when she turned twelve. Everyone starts somewhere. Including me.
I was this angry bitter person for couple of years until I learnt the art of letting go. Freeing others means freeing oneself. Recalling my past and gratitude also helped tremendously. If I had lived in ancient Greece, I would not have survived into adulthood. Survival of the fittest was important then so sickly infants were usually thrown into an active volcano.
I am forever grateful to an extremely gifted acupuncturist for saving my life. Western medicine did not work on me. The process was long, arduous and torturous for an eleven years old but I made it out alive.
Although a disaster in parenting, my father has his merits too. For example, he treated all his employees well. He never underpaid or delayed paying their salaries. He is also a very loyal husband when most of his rich friends either kept mistresses within the country or abroad. Rich business men then could afford to keep mistresses in Taiwan.
I remembered my childhood friend being so devastated as her father had a mistress in Taiwan. Her mom almost checked into a mental asylum thus neglected her brood. This incident troubled me so much that I had a talk with my dad. The ten year old me was so brilliant at offering relationship advice to my dad that he laughed out loud. Basically I said something along the lines of, "If you want to find true love remember to deposit all your money into my mom's account. If it's real love then your new love interest won't need your money."
His decent conducts must have paid off in a way because he met a really ethical alternative medicine doctor. There are two well-known hospitals in Malaysia specializing in holistic medicine so we're lucky to meet this doctor. He is very thorough in patient history and even demanded all the medical records such as PET scan, MRI and blood tests. Recently, he solved some problems bothering my dad such as phlegm, inability to swallow even liquid food, acid reflux and swollen ankles.
My dad is way wealthier than me but the reason I chose to fund his medical expenses had nothing to do with me vying for possible inheritance. I wanted to leave him a good memory. Hopefully he will peacefully departs to the next world without much regrets when the time arrives.
Thank you for reading!
Have a wonderful week ya all!
Cheers,
Wheat
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