Anna's Inkwell
Journal
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Ode to My Grandfather on a bright spring morning, faced the East River, determined to conquer the Brooklyn Bridge. His face dark and wise, his midnight hair speckled with misplaced strands of silver. He reassured me, "If the bridge falls down, I will hold you up with one arm, and use my other to swim to shore." My six-year old eyes searched the glistening water for fish. When we stopped midway through the bridge, "I love you always, Gong Gong," I said, as he lifted me up in his muscular arms and pointed to buildings on the Manhattan horizon. Those days have long since come and gone. I am in the hospital, sitting next to my grandfather's bed. Frail, his dark hair gone, the shine of his eyes no longer there: he is dying of cancer. And there I promise him, "We'll cross the Brooklyn Bridge again together someday." He nods and goes to sleep. New York City, 2000 |
Notes by the Author My maternal grandfather immigrated to the United States during the early 1980s. Though he spent his early childhood in extreme poverty, he was a self-made man: he taught himself how to read and worked his way up in a Hong Kong shipping company. Later, however, he experienced the agony of losing three children, one of them a suicide. My grandparents came to the U.S. shortly after my aunt's death. When my grandfather finally arrived, my brother and I, plump and hyper 4- and 6-year olds, brought him much joy and meaning back into his life. While my grandmother preferred to deal with her grief by playing mahjong and chain-smoking, my grandfather practiced Tai Chi and spent a lot of time with his two grandchildren. One of our most memorable walks was our trek across Brooklyn Bridge. At the time, we lived in an apartment complex in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, directly overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. Though it wasn't technically a long walk for grown-ups, for my brother and I, it was a monstrous journey. My grandfather pushed us on by entertaining us with his stories and pep talks ("We're almost there!"). Once in a while, my little brother would whine and complain that his feet hurt, or that his back hurt, from all the walking, and my grandfather would carry him for a little while. When we got home that day, my brother and I were so excited that we had walked across and back the Brooklyn Bridge! During my junior year in high school, my grandfather was diagnosed with stomach cancer. I was the first in my family to know, since I was the one who took my grandfather to the doctor that day. I watched him go through chemo and radiation therapy. I watched him, a strong man in his youth, dwindle away and disappear. A year later, on February 8, 1993, my grandfather, at the age of 66, passed away. Too young, too soon. I miss my grandfather, and I still think of him often. I wrote this ode to deal with my pain of losing him. |