Tommy Ming Hung Chow
October 28, 1935 - June 13, 2003
My father lived a life that I view with great admiration. He was a cook, from nearly the moment he set foot in Canada, to the very end. He was no "cordon bleu" or a graduate of any fine schools of cuisine, but he made the best food that anyone from any class could appreciate.
My father was generally an easygoing, quiet and private man. He hardly ever spoke out of line, as he only responded to vulgarity when necessary. He was independent in many ways, in the manner which he held himself, but still depended greatly on our family for support and comfort.
He always managed to keep our family fed, and worked hard all his life to maintain a decent living. He travelled all over Canada, making friends and entertaining others with his humour and charm. With his tall and built frame from working in kitchens, he could easily be seen as a gentle giant.
My mother may have fretted and fought with him, but she loved him all the same. They may never have said it aloud in a serious manner in front of us, or even between them, but I know that they held together true.
When he started our family, he must have been so proud to have us three. The most beloved, and spoilt, was my younger brother, as he was the only son and the youngest child. My older sister became distant from the family emotionally and physically, as she went on to set foot in the world as an independent woman. I am my father's image, a quiet and easygoing child, but without his grace and charm. Nevertheless, we were on our way to starting our lives away from home, and distancing our lives from our parents.
Monday, 9 June 2003
My sister called me at about 7 pm. I was disturbed by the phone ringing immediately, as I knew my father was due to come back to Quebec from Calgary that day, having spent the previous 3 weeks with relatives in Alberta. As I listened to her voice trembling quietly, I felt my heart stop. My father was in the hospital, and my brother had called her to say he had some sort of brain hemorrhage or something. She was heading up there immediately.
I was already weeping but I had no time to despair, so I packed a sweater and a pair of underwear, took my bag and ran. (I should have thought a little more about the packing, but from that moment on, I don't have a clue as to what I was thinking.) My sister and I got in her car and she drove.
We arrived in Quebec at about 10 pm at Hopital Laval, and we saw my brother leaving the building. He was extremely moody and muttered "6th floor, ICU. I'm going home."
We found my mother in the waiting room (where we would spend many, many hours in the course of the week). She was calmed and brought us up to date.
"A massive, massive stroke." She looked into the distance as she spoke. I don't think she even saw us clearly. She explained how it happened, how my father got off the plane in Quebec fine, at 4 pm. How she drove him home, and prepared supper for him for 5 pm. How he was sitting happily at the table, rice bowl in left hand, chop sticks in the right, nibbling at a piece of chicken. How suddenly he dropped his bowl to the floor, something he never did. How my mother and my brother tried to get him to lie down on the couch, but couldn't move him since he was so massive, so she laid him on the floor while my brother called for an ambulance. How he kept trying to eat that piece of chicken, as though he didn't know what was going on with his body. How he was actually completely paralyzed on the left side from that point on.
We were truly puzzled as to how it happened. It turns out that it was a complete fluke. Strokes are often quite unpredictable and affect hundreds of thousands of people every year in Canada. Most importantly, he went through a complete medical checkup just before he went on the plane, for a new insurance policy. They found nothing more than high blood pressure, for which he was already taking medication. They approved his policy at the same time he went to Calgary, and that was that.
Although my mother thinks that it was due to his high blood pressure and flying on all those planes in such a short period of time. He was actually treated on a trip to Las Vegas when he got there, and had the time of his life. So within three weeks, he went on all these planes: Quebec-Toronto-Calgary, Calgary-Las Vegas, Las Vegas-Calgary, and Calgary-Toronto-Quebec. Surely, there must be something about flying so often with high blood pressure that is given as warning to flyers?
We were told that my father was in ICU since he couldn't breathe on his own very well, and he was stabilized at that point. But his right side kept fidgeting so they had to sedate him often to keep him from stressing out his muscles. The doctors and nurses informed us that he could very well be rehabilitated to walk again, although it would only happen with a lot of physiotherapy and effort. My sister was calmer at this news, but I still had much anxiety.
We went into the room to see him, and it was hard. It was very hard. I started crying at that point, and I can't remember when I stopped crying. My sister told me to stop crying since he would be alright. But it was very difficult. He was on a respirator and had tubes down his nose into the stomach, to keep him vomiting, and throat. Oxygen was given to him through other tubes. IV and tubes were everywhere. And he couldn't move his left side. His right side occasionally moved to accommodate him, but his moving leg pushed around his non-moving leg in vain.
We went home that night, leaving my mum in the waiting room sleepless and stressed. My mum later told me that my brother's friend, Simon, arrived in the middle of the night from Montreal to the hospital, and freaked her out, as he was lying in the middle of the floor, face-down, asleep. But in any case, she stayed in the waiting room and did not sleep more than a few hours.
My brother was crying in his room, and my sister tried to console him. I had no words, as I felt if I were to say anything, I would break down into that mess as well. Since my father was stable, my sister decided she could go back to Montreal the next day.
We slept longer than a few hours, but we did not sleep well.
Tuesday, 10 June 2003
He woke up sometime in the morning when I went in to see him. His eyes opened and we were overjoyed. I kept my tears aside as I talked to him as well as I could in cantonese. Apparently, he had kept tapping his pocket with his right hand the day before, in the ambulance and earlier, and no one knew what he wanted from that. I recognized it as a form of communication, and I asked him if he wanted to write something. He nodded frantically, and we got a pencil and paper for him.
He went on that day to write all sorts of things, from English things like "By (sic)" and "I [heart] you," and opted to write more comfortably in chinese: "Am I dying" to "pee" and "water" and my brother, and my sister, and so on. Basically, he didn't know what was going on, so my mother was in the ICU for a while explaining what was happening and telling him things. He was definitely uncomfortable in his situation, and he kept repeating things as though he kept forgetting the answers we told him. My mother told him not to freak out the kids (meaning us three), since he was going to be alright, and that my mum wasn't even crying, as she never did unless something terribly, terribly unsettled her. (An incidence in 1999 made her start crying, as my sister and I had a tremendous fight.) So my dad shouldn't be saying things like he's dying, since my brother kept freaking out and crying in front of him. So there.
The nurses kept kicking us out of the room that day to take care of things, and conveniently forgot to tell us it was alright to go back in. And they kept sedating him to keep him from stressing his body out. We were obviously very annoyed that they kept sedating him, since all he wanted was to talk to us the only way he could.
I think he was frustrated mostly because we didn't know what he actually wanted. He couldn't speak because of the tubes down his throat, but the nurses said he would be able to be taken off the respirator soon as he was returning to normal respiratory levels of operation. My mother kept telling my father that he couldn't write so much because he was going to fatigue his muscles. He kept trying to write. He also tried to pull the tubes out of his throat and such, but the nurses tied his arm down to keep him from doing so. It was probably more painful to see him like this than any other time that week - in such frustration and fear and helplessness.
My siblings and I were less distressed than the previous day, although my brother kept crying and running in and out of the ICU. We were trying to convey the message that the doctors and nurses told us - he would be alright. He would not have the same mobility as before, but he is still our father. My brother was less convinced by the message, but he was always very sullen and stubborn about it.
My sister left that evening with Simon to go back to Montreal. My mother stayed once again at the hospital, while my brother and I went home to rest. And once again, I was unable to sleep soundly.
Well, maybe because there were about four different clocks ticking all around me in the living room where I was sleeping, all at once, asynchronously. Added to the deep thumping in my chest.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Thinking about his recovery, I had planned to stay in Quebec and keep my father company and take care of him, helping him recuperate and rehabilitate, plant his chinese melon plants, tending the garden, learning more things about my dad, and so on. I didn't think it would be such a bad thing, actually.
Yet, I was still uneasy that day, as I still could not bring myself to eat anything as in the previous two days.
We went to see my dad as often as possible. My mother hardly wanted to leave his side while he was awake, as he kept wanting to write more and more. He said he wanted water. The nurse said he couldn't have any water, as he was already getting some intravenously, and it would damage his liver or kidneys somehow if he had more. They said he could have his nostril moistened very slightly on occasion, but nothing more. My father must not have liked that, as he kept complaining vehemently for water. "Water" he wrote in chinese. "Water" he wrote in the air. "Water" he wrote on my hand with his finger. "H2O" he finally spelt out on paper.
The nurses kicked us out at some point, to remove the respirator and the tubes that were keeping him from speaking. They said to try to get him to talk more, to cough up the stuff built up in his throat, so that he could speak better.
I told him this, and he tried his very best to start talking. Very low, guttural sounds came out, like a kitchen pipe gurgling sludge. I could barely make out a lot of these sounds, as he was speaking cantonese, but my mother would be able to understand him better. I tried to get him to spit, but I had to untie him to get him to spit it out himself on the tissue. He had great difficulty to make any sort of spitball, but he then went on to pulling out the oxygen tube to clean his left nostril. The nurses heard me speaking loudly to him to stop pulling at his tubes, and told me they didn't want him untied. Big difference, he untied himself later anyway.
He said his head hurt. I asked the nurse if he could have something for his head. She said we couldn't give him anything. I told my dad that. He still kept complaining later that his head hurt. Unbeknownst to us at the time, he was experiencing the last part of his hospitalization.
I told him about his pictures of Las Vegas. He had a roll in his bag that he had not developed, and the cousins in Calgary told me to get them done so he could see them, and it would cheer him up. He got excited, and started writing "L-o-s V-e-g..." and I told him that I had his pictures developed that day, and I would bring them in the next day.
I remember that he opened his eyes that day only once in my presence, but then he couldn't open them again afterwards. I asked him to open his eyes, and it looked as if he made some effort to try to open them again, but they seemed to be either crusted shut or that he just couldn't.
Nevertheless, I felt somewhat confident that he would be able to see at least some photos of his trip. I even printed out the digital photos my cousins burned on a mini cd in large format, so that my dad could see them despite his eyesight.
I think Betty came to visit that day for the first time. She is the daughter of a chinese woman whom my mother visited and brought food to while the woman was hospitalized, and Betty was not available to visit her. Because of this, Betty felt forever indebted to my mother. She was in town with her husband to look after her mother, and my mum decided to leave her a message that my father was in the hospital.
Betty is a very spiritual person who has a sort of sixth sense of spirits. Yes, like Sixth Sense. Anyway, besides that, she was a good friend to us during that time, and we were grateful for her being there. My mum must have felt more at ease with someone there in the ICU who could communicate with my father in another level.
Sure, she might be a bit of an oddball, but she was there to support us, and we truly appreciated it. It was more than most people would ever do.
My mother brought my brother and me home earlier that day, while she returned to the hospital, and we sat around waiting for my mother to come home that evening.
At around 9 pm, the phone rang. I knew that it would be an ominous phone call once again, but this time it would be worse. My brother answered it.
He said our father was now also no longer responding on his right side.
My mum came to get my brother, and I was left alone at home. I called Jorgh and wept on the phone.
My sister would be coming back to Quebec the next day.
Thursday, 12 June 2003 & Friday, 13 June 2003
They told us it was the brain. It had expanded due to a lot of dead brain cells causing the surrounding cells to swell, and the whole brain was pushing down on the brain stem. He had some arteries that were blocked, and it stopped circulation to his brain. He was back on the respirator, and now he was no longer awake. In fact, he was most likely brain dead at this point. The neurologist and the ICU doctor waited until 4 pm that day to tell us this news.
It is time to prepare for the worst, my mother was told.
It is time for us to prepare for the worst, my mother said.
I can't even remember what happened that Thursday, and in what order. My brother had left, totally unwilling to face any of this. I remember Betty coming by and talking to us. We talked about funeral preparations, arrangements, people, cemetery plots, and so on. She talked about how she rode in the ambulance with her father, but feeling that his life force was already fleeing during the ride, and suddenly she knew he had died in the ambulance, and how she was haunted by her father's spirit once but she calmed herself down and just invited him to sit and talk, and how she talked to her dad often when she needs him.
She talked about how my dad's spirit was actually no longer in his body, but he couldn't leave as he was still attached to his vessel, still with its heart beating. He was wandering around the floor, with us in the waiting room, wondering why we were so upset and crying and so on. She also told us we could talk to him, whenever, and he would be listening to us, whenever. My mother was a bit skeptical, as she said that her father never came to her to talk to her. Betty then said, "But did you talk to him directly?" To this, my mother thoughtfully said no. Betty's justification is that we don't hang around if we're not spoken to directly, so why bother unless you are?
She told us how my father was feeling. He was trapped more or less, and when she walked in, he was crying heavily on the inside. My mother told me later that since he couldn't cry physically, he "borrowed" Betty to cry through, and she cried heavily for my father, who then calmed down afterwards. She said that when my brother walked in and touched his arm, my father was all at once very happy. Betty had told my brother that my father wanted to hear his music, so my brother "played" on my father's arm.
I remember an older man who was obviously a patient in the hospital. He wandered around in a walker and a hospital gown, thankfully with underpants on. I dunno, maybe they're actually supposed to wear underpants? Anyway, he sat and watched television, as they did not have televisions in their rooms without renting. It was funny to see the guy, actually.
I remember having the photos in my hand, trying to show my unconscious father the pictures of his trips to Las Vegas and Calgary. I told him I forgot the big prints. I told him that I didn't know how to take care of his plants. I told him that Jorgh would be coming to Quebec the next day. I told him that we should get out of this creepy and stupid hospital with crummy doctors and nurses and people who wanted to keep you there to make more money. I told him that I would be around for him as long as he needed, in Quebec, in the hospital, wherever. I asked him to take me to Hong Kong and China and we could go see all the sights that they missed out on the last thirty years. I told him he needed to come see me graduate after December. I am getting two degrees, did you know that? I told him he should stay to see my brother graduate and go on to university. Maybe I should have told him to stay so he could see my sister have a baby someday. Maybe that baby would have pinched his nose too when it first comes out. That's what my sister did.
My brother did a wretched thing that night. He wasn't home. He went to work and didn't come back that evening. He went to the hospital instead, and called us at around 9 pm stating where he was. My mother was finally home that night, seeing as it wasn't going to help being there. She was sitting with this terrible look on her face, sighing so heavily it made my sister and I cringe in pain. My sister and I vowed to get him home that night, and we drove off to the hospital. The plan was to have her wait in the car by the hospital doors, and I would rush up the stairs to fetch him from my father's side.
Well, it worked out almost like that. He wouldn't leave at first.
But mommy is really upset right now. You need to get home.
He still wouldn't go. Wait until 10.
Why wait until then?
Because I won't be coming back.
He didn't want to face the fact. He wasn't going to come back the next day to pull the respirator.
You need to come home now. Our sister is downstairs waiting. Mom is so terribly upset, and this isn't helping her at all.
After a long pause... Give me five minutes.
Afterwards, we went to the car, strapped my brother's bike to the bike rack, and went home. Then he took off the bike rack, and the bike, and took off again. I was rather vexed, but my mother and my sister said to let him be. He came back about half an hour later and went straight to bed.
I think we slept a few more hours than usual, but I was still restless as usual.
Friday was the hardest. If Wednesday was the most painful for all of us, Friday was the least painful, but most difficult. They ran an EEG on my father that morning at about 11, and the technician stated that the brain waves were flat.
Of course, being terrible unsympathetic doctors they were, they didn't tell us this until much later. They said they wanted to wait for the neurologist, who was in another hospital and would only be coming that afternoon. Then we would make the fateful decision. But it was already made, and the outcome would be fated to happen.
Jorgh popped into the hospital, and I kept him in the waiting room the whole time. We really weren't allowed to bring non immediate family members. Although Betty went in because my mum claimed Betty to be her sister.
The guy in the hospital gown was in the waiting room again. Then he asked why I was here. I said it was my father. He asked when his operation would happen. I suddenly felt my speech give way and I started tearing up, and I excused myself. He was puzzled to why I was weeping, and I said there was no operation, since... since...
My sister was vexed that I was crying so much. Jorgh held me and I tried to compose myself. My sister told the guy what it was. He said that he just had a smaller stroke and he was in the hospital for recovery. He was sorry for us, and wished us "bon courage."
Surely, the hospital is the most depressing place on the planet. If telemarketing is the worst job in the world, hospitals are the suckiest places in the universe.
The neurologist whom we all despised now had came and left around 5 pm, and we were left with the same conclusion as the technician. My father was brain dead.
We decided to pull the respirator once the whole family arrived. That meant my brother. And we waited and waited, and went home and had supper and went back to the hospital and waited. It was 9 pm when he finally arrived, and we took over the room where my father lay. Jorgh and Betty accompanied us this visit, but then I sent Jorgh back to the waiting room for the rest.
The resident doctor that evening came by, with the nurse, and he removed the respirator. We returned to the room, closed the shades, sat around my father, and waited.
We talked, sang, talked, argued, talked, laughed, cried, sang some more, sang songs of which we didn't know the lyrics. We were his family, being his family, together. Betty had told us we could talk directly to him, and he was listening. We were supposed to invite him home afterwards, so he could find out where we went. We talked to him.
The whole while, I watched his heart rate, his blood pressure. I watched his body struggle for air, his body heave slightly, and his heart race faster. Then it slowed down, until it stopped at 9:30 pm. We very calmly informed the doctor, and he came in to verify the heart stoppage.
Afterwards, there was some bureaucratic crap, with some information. We carried my father's things, making sure we gave the nurse his dentures so he wouldn't be without them. After that, as we were leaving, my brother just broke down, and my sister and I hugged and cried for a moment. My mother was in tears, but still in control. We stepped out of the hospital, and went home. My sister and mother bought doughnuts from Tim Hortons, and there was one we reserved for my father. (The wagon wheel one.)
There's not much else I can say. My beloved cousins from Toronto came on the Saturday. The funeral was on the Monday, 16 June 2003. We buried him with a pair of his glasses, his Cross pen, and a lotto ticket which only one number came up. (Which is better than nothing, I suppose.) There's still no tombstone. I spent the week after the funeral taking care of things with my mother and sister. We had loads of flowers. We left most of them on the mound.
I'll be going back to Quebec on Sunday when my sister comes back from PEI with Brian. I vowed to get a summer job, by my father's bedside. I vowed to graduate by December, by my father's grave.
My dad rests next to the St Lawrence River, under a tree, and it's particularly beautiful. It's like a big scenic view you'd see in a travel brochure, except with all the 18th and 19th century tombstones and lawnmowers.
The question I wonder about nowadays is how do others do it? People are always dying and their friends and relatives are always dying. How do they lose someone they love and still go on with it? Do they know something I don't know? Is it a question of time...?
I am content that his passing was peaceful. He was happy during his trip to Las Vegas and Calgary, seeing old friends and having lots of fun. I am grateful that he is my dad, the bestest dad (better than TV dads, movie dads, DAD's Bagels, DAD's cookies, Bruce Willis, Bill Cosby, all these weirdos put together, and daddy long legs), and that I have so much to live up to.
I love you daddy. Rest in peace.
