Today marks a year since the passing of my grandfather, my Ja Ja (爺爺 / yé ye). He was and still is my favourite old man on the whole of the earth. It was a very peaceful goodbye: perhaps as good as it could ever have been. He made my own strangeness make sense, and lived as proof that someone like me could not only scrape through in this world but face it in dignity and thrive, earn respect and esteem, and come out the other side of all the odds with a loving family and complete contentment in all he’d accomplished, by the end. He gave me a link to a rich, illustrious culture, a language in which I always wanted to be able to speak with him, whose foreign sounds within my mouth felt like a long-sought welcome home. I inherit his genius and dreams of machines, and a legacy in engineering that feels not like a looming burden, but like Excalibur to draw from stone and crown me righteous king. I am the eldest son of an eldest son of an eldest son, each of the same design, in iteration. I inherit his trinkets, his brushes, his soapstone seals, his ink sticks, eyes, and name. His life was spent vastly before I knew him, and defined by events more akin sometimes to fiction, serendipity akin to prophecy. He was not perfect, and I inherit his flaws as the brush dipped and paper marked alike. But he was mine, and we admired and adored each other. It is a well deserved rest and a job well done. We all went on this year in peace, and he will never be replaced, but he will never truly be gone.
Sleep well, Ja Ja. Thank you for everything. I will love you forever.
[Images, in sequence:
A digital drawing of an old man propped up in a hospital bed, wearing a gown, headphones, fingerless gloves, and a small pouch on a string around his neck. He is very thin and frail, but smiling serenely and giving a thumbs up. Around him is written “祝你早日康复” and “Get Well Soon Ja Ja! I love you so very much! You are such a treasure to us all. With utmost love, from Dorian”. In the corner it is signed with a red seal that reads “徳瑞雲♥︎”, and the whole picture is bordered with scattered red leaves.
A photo of the original paper from which the first image is redrawn: a child’s drawing in thick black and teal markers of the same old man lying in a hospital bed, smiling and waving, with a nearby table and chair. Written in clumsy bubble text is “GEt well soon” and “LoVE _____”, the name originally present but blurred in the photograph. In the top right corner it is dated “24. June 2005”, with a very faded printed label that says “I ♥︎ JAJA”. It is yellowed, warped from past water spills and tatty at the edges, having been taped to the front of a kitchen cabinet for almost twenty years. I drew it when he was hospitalised briefly at the time. I was five.
The old man drawn as an anthropomorphic paravian dinosaur of some sort, sitting in an armchair with a footrest. The hyperextended clawed second toe on each foot pokes out over his little slippers.
The same image as the last, zoomed out to include a TV on in the background and my own little dinosaur sona of the same kind, animated joyfully hopping up and down, having gained his approval.
End ID.]
