RIP Uncle Rivai

i think i might be going through a sort of mid life crisis.  my uncle is gone.  and i still can't write a real post about how i feel.  its taken me a few months to digest human mortality and now i can't stop thinking about how half my life is gone.  every few days i do the math on how much life i've used up. and i can't keep being stubborn about youth and health.  nothing trumps 36 years of age and counting...  what have i done.  what am i going to do?  what is life about.  family?  kids? philanthropy?  impact?  love?  happiness? love?  death?  its a swirl of thoughts and its only hitting me now.  i haven't had to deal with death before and my family doesn't talk about it.  we got zoey to make dad happier for the month but my mom didn't even fly back for the funeral.  we were so worried about my dad losing his buddy.  his younger brother.  we thought we had all this culture and tradition to adhere to but in fact...we didnt talk about anything.  my dad avoided seeing his brother in a coma at the hospital....my dad didn't mention much to any of us.   none of the relatives flew in for the funeral.  we just spent the holidays in a quiet house.  its very practical but is it unsupportive?  terribly confusing  but to me....it how we do things.  it's normal?  maybe since we don't talk about it....we don't think about it.  my dad doesn't even go to flushing anymore.

My uncle Rivai, my dad’s younger brother…(they look alike)...you could hear his laughter a block away.  When you put the two brothers together...all you heard was laughter.  We’re not the most talkative of families…so these two just kind of looked at each other….laughed….they ordered food...laughed at the food….laughed at each other...they ate the food and laughed some more...my uncles laugh was more a cackle...and then my dad would always follow it up with a HUH HUH HUH.From as long as I could remember, it was our weekly routine...every sunday after chinese school, we’d rush into his deli….for chips and sandwiches....and uncle rivai would be laugh when we came in.  as we got older...we had thursday night dinners....everyone knew about the brotherly gatherings….even though they never called each other to arrange it.  They’d wait for one another to call...without calling each other….but when they picked up the phone….we’d show up at laburnum.  Honk the horn and we’d ask my uncle “what do you want to eat”“where do you want to eat”   not like it was ever much of a question...because we’d always order the same thing.  And we’d ask for an extra plate of peanuts….and we’d ask for chili sauce.  And uncle rivai wouldn’t eat the food until the white rice came out.  He’d laugh at me for not eating rice.  “Eating rice is 70% of the battle of the meal”.  Salaam alaikum  My uncle had a lot of theories and philosphies.  I dont really know what they were reallly about.   They were always long winded and intense.  But he loved talking about it. And they loved laughign about it.  Do the same jokes get longwinded?  Or do they become timeless?  He always told me emping goes best with a beer.  And he eats cheese and toast for breakfast.  And one time he ordered a nasi goreng istimewah…..and it just turned out to have an extra egg…That’s all we ever talked about…  but that’s all we ever needed.  It was simple.  We were full and we were happy.  We Dropped him off and he watched us pull away.    It sounds so simple….but he will be missed so much.  Thursdays will never be the same….We love you.

my uncle had liver cancer and went through chemo earlier in the year.  they said the cancer was in remission.  but he started feeling dizzy.  he had a hip replacement so he didn't complain too much about the dizzyness he started to get and the doctors didn't send him to get a CT scan.  on dec 21st he had a stroke and fell into a coma.  they found out he had a tumor in his brain and it was pretty too late to operate with no brain activity.