By Julie Hsiao
My takong—my mother’s mother’s father—died in 2018. I find myself yearning for conversations that will never happen with him. He used to take me to the park and feed me delicious home cooked dishes: succulent lion’s head meatballs, savory stir fried bok choy, and warm pork bone broth that you could smell from the hallway. His warm hands would wrap around my clammy fingers and lead me down steep stone park steps.
We didn’t talk very much, as I didn’t know enough Mandarin and he didn’t know English. We never held a conversation where both of us fully understood the other. The extent of Mandarin I knew was just enough to communicate small demands and observations. I could ask for a mug of steamed milk or a sip of his herbal tea. I could tell him about the birds that I saw in the park or how delicious his cooking was, but I never got to ask him about his pet birds, his struggles throughout life, or even his favorite color.
When my family would visit my mother’s side in Shanghai, we would always stay with my great grandparents in their cozy apartment. I would walk into my takong’s dark room, dim sunlight coming through the silky window curtains. He would be lying down on his twin sized bed, eyes closed and chest barely rising with each breath. Sometimes my great aunt and great uncle would come over to cook for him, and I would tell takong that it was time for dinner.
My family doesn’t express love in the way that movies do. We don’t say “I love you” and we don’t give each other kisses on the forehead. Instead, my family will cut up fresh fruits or fry up chewy yam flavored rice cakes for me to snack on. Takong understood this language of love through food. He would peel grapefruits for his wife—my great grandmother—and he made sure that she would eat her meals on time. He even spent extra effort to remove the white pith of the fruit because he knew that his wife hated the bitter taste. His fingers would be pruney after his long hours of housework.
When he started to show signs of dementia, he shut down. Takong would spend hours in his room. He wouldn’t take walks in the park and he wouldn’t talk to his neighbors. He couldn’t remember my mother and sometimes he couldn’t remember himself. I felt like I was waiting for him to die, because I couldn’t stand to watch his mind erode into nothing.
A part of me wishes that I could tell my younger self to interrogate the life out of my takong. A part of me needs to know the stories of his past. The other part of me knows that he wouldn’t have been present due to Alzheimer’s. He used to wake up at the break of dawn to exercise in the park and buy fresh groceries for the day. I wish I could walk in the park near his apartment with him again and listen to his stories as we stroll through the paved streets. He would cook and clean until everyone was fed and the apartment was spotless. I wish I could watch his wrinkled face crease with smiles at the taste of good food and indulgent sweets.
When he died in 2018, I felt horrible for not crying. I felt like I should’ve grieved more, but there wasn’t much to grieve. I couldn’t grieve our meaningful conversations, because we never had any. I wish I had more to grieve.
Sometimes, people will comfort me and say that “he would’ve been proud of you”. I don’t know if he would’ve been proud of me, I never learned enough about him to figure out his values. I don’t even know his first name. I don’t know if he would have approved of my identity. I don’t know if he would have supported my interests. I knew him from the standpoint of a kid who dreamed of fresh bites of milk bread and cool sips of yogurt drinks. I will never know him as my current self, because he is gone. Firstname Liu was a tender soul. He would cook and clean for his family. He would wake up at six in the morning to steam milk, and he didn’t seem to like cold milk. He kept a big bag of candy for when the kids visited. Firstname Liu was born somewhere in Hong Kong and died in Shanghai. Firstname Liu would never know that his great grandchild grieved the things they never had.