After life
There are many Chinese traditions when it comes to honoring those who have passed away. I only know of a few, but there’s one that sticks out to me, one that I don’t uphold, not that I really uphold any of them.
The tradition goes like this: visit the grave of your ancestors, and do two things—bring food, and eat some of it, while leaving some behind, and bring money, usually fake, and burn it, usually in a small metal tin.
The core belief is that it visiting their grave is a time to commune with them, to eat with them, make sure they’re well-fed, and that they have enough money in the next life.
My mom raised me Christian, so we replaced eating with praying, and burning money, with more praying.
But she did instill in me a belief that there is a next life, and that, is something I still hold on to.
When my oldest nephew was two, my brother and sister-in-law took him to Disneyland. I flew down to join them.
I remember very little about the trip, except for a short two minutes when I sat with him in the car while his parents went inside a Starbucks to get coffee.
He had this red toy car, a mustang or something, and it sat on the floor, out of my nephew’s reach while he was buckled into his car seat. I picked it up for him, gave it to him, and then he promptly threw it back down to the floor.
He laughed hysterically.
I picked it back up.
He threw it back down.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
For some reason, I pulled out my phone and started filming. I lowered my already-deep voice and began negotiating with him about whether or not I should pick up the car again and give it back to him. I asked him if he would throw it back down. He said ‘yeah,’ and promptly laughed.
“Well then why should I give it back to you!?” you can hear me growl playfully. “You can’t fool me! You can’t fool me!”
I make him promise, that if I pick up the car, that he’ll keep it, and not throw it back down into ‘the abyss.’ He agreed.
I stuck my hand to the floor, picked up the car, and made the sound effects of a car driving as I gave it back to him.
And then he tossed it back to the floor.
He laughed. Hysterically. Again.
I threatened to take away his car seat.
The video is under two minutes long. It’s my favorite memory of him, and I show it to him several times a year.
“Do you remember this?” I ask.
“Yeah…” he smiles, sheepishly, and sometimes adds, trying to mimic me, “You can’t fool me!”
I know why I show it to him. It’s because it’s my favorite memory of him, and I really don’t want him to forget it. He was two. I hope that he remembers it as a fun memory, in the same way that I do. And as his body grows and his memory gets stronger, I figure that if I show it to him enough times, he will remember it.
On the flip side, I think about someone else in my family whose memory is tenuous and his future uncertain: my dad.
A few weeks ago, my dad was lying on the couch (a surprise to no one), looking at a calendar. It’s a special calendar; my sister-in-law made it, including photos of the family from the past year.
I happen to walk by on my way to the kitchen for something.
“Hey, Daniel?” my dad asks, and I walk over. “Who’s this?”
“Who’s, who?”
He points at a face in one of the photos.
I’m a little surprised; he’s seen this person many times over the past six years—six, because that’s how old he was in the photo.
“You don’t know who that is?” I ask.
He mumbles a bit. “I don’t know…is it Allen?” he finally suggests. He’s wrong, although my older nephew does look a little bit like my own childhood friend, Allen, when he himself was a kid.
“Yeah,” I smile and say anyway. “Yeah it is.”
And then I walk away. It’s the first concrete moment I realize how far my dad’s memory has really gone, where he no longer recognizes his grandson in a photo.
But the surprises aren’t over just yet.
“Daniel!” he calls for me again.
I haven’t left the kitchen yet, and I walk over.
“Who is this?”
“Who do you mean?”
He lifts a finger and points to someone else. “This one,” he says. “Who is this?”
It’s a young man with short hair, a sly grin on his face, posing with a six-year-old.
The six-year-old is my nephew.
My dad is pointing to the young man.
A wave of shock floods over me, and as is my default defense, I laugh. “You’re joking right?” I smile.
A few seconds pass as my dad alternates glances between the photo, and me, the photo, and me again.
“You don’t know who that is?” I ask.
And suddenly, he laughs heartily. “It’s you!”
He’s right. The young man he didn’t recognize, even if momentarily, that young man is me.
I’ve long known that Alzheimer’s shatters the brain and the ability to remember, but it’s always a little unnerving to bear witness to the first cracks. Not the myriad of surface scratches like forgetting the day, where we just ate, or whatever words I just said. I mean the cracks, like seeing the face of somebody you have known longer than they have known you, and suddenly seeing them as a stranger, wondering if you know them at all—the cracks the signal that a collapse isn’t just a theory, but is actually coming.
I guess that’s just where we are. In subsequent weeks, there have been several instances where, without the right context, I can tell that my dad is now on the path of losing his long-term memory, and that that loss is finally beginning to, ever so slowly, beginning to reach me. He still knows who I am in person. But I wonder how long until that goes too.
I wonder if I could show him photos, videos, anything to remind him of who I am, to remind him that he has two sons.
But unlike my older nephew, my dad will not continue to grow, and his memory will not continue to get stronger. In fact, it goes the other way. He will remember less, and less, and less. And my efforts will be for nothing.
Or will it?
It’s a question I have to ask.
I have to believe that something happens after we die. I have no idea what. Just, that there’s something, something that continues to carry on. That’s how the world seems to work. Things go from one thing to the next. Things evolve. Nothing stays the way it is, ever. A static eternity seems like an illusion.
I think that belief is why I continue to do something for my dad, to talk to him, eat with him, sit with him—all of this when I have the energy, of course. Because I hope that there is something after this life, something that I can continue to give him and he can take with him, something that he can give back to me, even if all that remains is a change in my own life, and in my own character.
Long after he forgets who I am, long after he passes away, maybe it’s still something that will continue and carry on. It’s still something.