From: Justin
Date: 7/14/00
Time: 2:52:14 PM
Reading Angeline's "A Heavy Cross To Bear" and Rosa's "My Papa", I would like the family to share the moment when Pa learnt of his final illness.
It was late January or some time in February 1993. We had broken the news to Mama, and Rosa (I think) suggested that I tell Pa of his illness. I can't remeber whether it was the Fatimah Hospital in Ipoh Garden or the hospital along Tambun Road, as I was in a slight sort of daze.
It was around mid-day or early afternoon when Pa's doctor led me to Pa's room. I entered alone and was alone with Pa for ten to fifteen minutes all together. As I went in, I think he was sitting in a chair about facing the door. Tears didn't come to my eyes as it was a moment for Pa to gather his strength (as he had done so many times in his life, as Angeline wrote)and for me to help lend him that strength.
He looked up at me and, because I guess he didn't expect to see me, I could see on his face the expectant gathering of strength welling up within Papa, Peter the Rock. I held both his hands in mine, in a stooping posture before him, and in a steady tone, as normal as I could do it, said to him that the doctor has told us of the results of the tests and we have told Ma. I shall never forget the vulnerability in his eyes as he looked straight into my face and eyes as I said this.
Whether he actually asked in words or not, I cannot remember, but in that fleeting moment I received his question from his heart to my heart. I answered him, "yes, Pa, doctor says it's cancer of the liver", holding his hands still. He said quietly, quickly, that he had expected it. And poor Papa was, despite all his strength, stunned for a moment. Then, very quickly and quietly, as he had shown so many times in the trials of his life, he accepted, in his actual utterance of the words, God's Will. How do I describe the strength in that resignation as it took over his whole being, still holding my hands.
He asked a few details about his condition and about Mama (even at that moment), and then I was half squatting before him holding his shoulders, and Papa's whole being and the Papa-smell of what he had always meant to me and to all of us enveloped me.
Small tears were then in his eyes and in my eyes. Then, learning from him not at that moment but from a lifetime of seeing in him the life-giving blood that made him receive life's joys with such gladness (he was so happy just playing poker with us so many Chinese New Years)and accepting deep sorrows and worries with such an abiding sense of challenge, I held his arms looking with all my love into his eyes and said to him, "Pa, you'll fight it, with all your strength you'll fight it, we'll fight it".
Quietly, steadily, clearly, without pausing for me, Pa answered me "Yes, I'll fight it, yes, I'm going to fight it". That was Papa I saw, with the tired but determined as ever resolve pulling up once more from the new depths that he never before this fathomed despite the bravery of his life and struggles for us.
All this now I saw on Pa's face, the steady return of his resolve. He said he would fight until Francis' wedding the next year. I was with him for quite a while more, talking as father and son, sharing this eternal moment of his life with us, with me and with our mother, my brother and all my sisters who were all there with me in my being and in my consciousness.
I can't recollect too much of what passed afterwards. Till today and forever, this eternal moment gives me strength, which each time I think of it, I receive again and again with gladness that it was given to me to embrace Pa for Mama, my brother and all my sisters.