|| Remembering July 4th, 2008

While I was in NYC, I wasn't able to connect to my mother on home phone or cell. I became very worried, sitting on the roof top of a building just across the United Nations, very windy and cool, gorgeous views of the mid town towering over Citibank buildings and the east river on the angle, while I impatiently waited on Ronald's reply as I had him check on her home. Luckily, she was fine.

But someone was not fine. I came back to work and as any other e-mail that comes to my outlook, it was labeled as "Something about Bill", and this message came from Wen. When I got time to check on it, I was shocked. Wen was telling me and a few others that Bill "unexpectedly passed away ... ". Words could hardly express my frustration and fear, as if the bad feelings on that particular day, when repeatedly dialing my mother's phone numbers on the streets, maybe hundreds of times, were becoming real because tragedies were right there happening. Why do they have to be real?

We are taking turns to take care of Wen and Jimmy. I do not know if we need to do that, I would've preferred some quiet times for meditation, looking for the peace in my mind (and why does it have to be the same for everyone?). But obviously there are worldly things (or inventions) that take chances helping people find their ways of understanding salvations, I mean the people who live, the leaving ones are freed, and they should be happy. The emotions that a human being experiences throughout his/her life are a lot to bear, to be exempt and to go back to the earth is probably the best thing in the end.

However, that is not the end of it. I was just told that the aunt from my father's family left us at 2am on this day July 4th, 2008, same day as my father three years ago. I could not not feel the immense sadness, and the greatest loss. This uncle and aunt, they had been very generous, the most kind in the world. They were simple people but they loved me so dearly when they could barely have enough to support their own family. I was still very young, but I remember the visits to the uncle's hospital and my father's village, every little detail was marked deep to my brain, now as they left me, the memories suddenly seem to be cruel.

It is the third passage within three months. I cannot hold back tears. I need console. I need that piece of mind to survive longer, but the strength comes inside myself. I was describing the premium service (ironic that I should ever use that word) at the funeral place to someone, it has a power of putting my mind all together for a whole. At that moment, I am a very extreme chemical person, I wish I could just remain that chemical in life, I really wish. But I am not. I rattle with news. I get emotional. I show a lot of sorrow.

My mother, she sounded very firm. I lit up a candle when I walked into the St. Patrick, for my father, he is gone for three years ... but he is with us forever and ever and ever.