June 9 was my dad's 18th death anniversary. He left us when I was 20, just about a month or two before I received word that I'd gotten a place in NUS. I mention NUS because it was one of my dad's unspoken hopes that at least one of his two kids would make it to uni, especially when all three of his brother's kids did. I remember the days that led to his death and the days immediately after quite vividly. I doubt if I'll ever forget them, but in case I do, this blog will serve as a reminder to my thoughts and feelings about the whole episode and is also a tribute to him, in written form as I was never the type to express myself to my family verbally.
Dad was due to go for his second major bypass surgery in June 1991. He'd had his first in 1980, back when open heart surgery was not common. I remember an Australian heart surgeon operated on the first two people to undergo major heart surgery back then, one of whom was my father. The surgery took an extremely long time, about 5-6 hours if I recall correctly. In those days, they literally sliced an opening vertically along your chest and also along one's thighs to harvest some veins from the leg. It was a very painful process and my dad took months to recover. So when it was time for his second one some 10 years later, he was very afraid of the pain he'd have to bear with again. Of course the doctors reassured him that bypass surgeries had come a long way and it was just 'routine' for people to go for a second one. The techniques had improved significantly and one would recover much quicker, with less pain.
I remember visiting him at the hospital days before his surgery. I remember the Wimbledon on the TV when we were with him, just hours before he suffered a massive heart attack, two days before he was to have gone for his surgery. I remember his doctor's decision to operate on him there and then, despite his heart attack. I remember his doctor's eyes were bloodshot red when he came to tell us he was going to operate. My mum and I weren't sure if that was due to his tiredness from lack of sleep or if he'd been in surgery all day. We did not dare entertain the thought that these possible reasons could have somehow contributed to an unsuccessful operation.
Just before the doctors began to operate, my dad suffered another massive heart attack. With this, our hopes and spirits just went spiralling but with prayer, nothing is impossible. We kept vigil all night, chanting the hail mary for hours and my mind was thinking thoughts which, til this day, leaves me with a guilty feeling that I've yet to reconcile with. All that night, different scenarios went though my mind. What if he died? Then the practical side of me started planning his funeral and everything else associated with a death. Til this day, a little part of me has always felt guilty that he died because I was thinking those thoughts, that I'd left him for dead already, when he wasn't even dead yet. It's like making something come true just by thinking about it. When those thoughts kept running through my mind, I tried very hard to push them out but when one has time on her hands, one's mind tends to run amok. I'm the sort of person who thinks more than she does, and my head is always filled with stuff that's not necessarily translated into words. A tormented mind of sorts. It's very unhealthy but that's just who I am. My dad was the same way, rather quiet and kept most of his innermost thoughts to himself. I guess I take to him that way.
I regret that he never got to see or know Meg. He would've doted on her to bits. He loved little children. It showed in his relationship with my cousin's son, Kevin. But that's life. You can't control what happens. You just have to make the best of the here and now, and make a change if it's not going your way. It takes courage and it upsets the status quo, but if you don't do something about it, you're going to waste your life away. Now if only I could take my own advice...
We try to go at least once a year to CCK to clean up my dad's grave. That's my mum who faithfully and tenderly does all the work, while I pretend to help.
I do miss my dad occasionally, but with time, these moments drift further apart.
