The loss of my father

    Since I was a kid, I supposed my father was authoritarian, emotionally reserved, and effectively distant. He was as stern as a teacher when he found that my school scores were not good enough or I had not finished the meal prepared by my mother. He used to hit me with clothes hangers, or his muscular hands. The bruise would remain for at least one or two days. However, my mother told me that they will become more depressed when they beat harder.

    I lived in a low-income family, but my siblings and I had graduated from the best Chinese Independent high school in Kuala Lumpur. My father would try everything to pay our school expenses and living expenses. In my memory, my father's dilapidated green pocket just reserved a few coins at the end of every month. He never buys any luxury goods or consumes any expensive things in his life. He was the kindest person who wanted to save more money for his family. Even though our family become wealthier, my father was still very careful about his spending.

    He dedicated his whole life to raising us up from elementary school, and high school to university in order to give us a better future. He had low vision sight since he was born, and even though he had high intense pain in his eyes, he would not let us know, until he lost his eyesight, and we found that he got glaucoma. He was reluctant to quit his job after putting a lot of effort to persuade him several times. However, he lost his smile and was generally low-spirited as he worried about spending money on buying medicine or treatments. 

    At the end of 2019, I vividly remembered that I and my sister brought along my father to extend his passport, but he was furious about the extension money for waste. He would not live longer and threw his passport on the floor. Some people around us were frightened about his attitude and come to comfort his emotions. Fortunately, I had an opportunity to celebrate this 69-year-old birthday before I traveled back to Taiwan. He did not like to eat cake in his life but he had finished it on that day. Before I and my sister departed from Malaysia to Taiwan and Singapore, I strongly felt that he has unwilling to let us go apart from him.

    For the sake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I could not travel back to Malaysia, and I just could online talk with him, but until the March of 2022, he cannot hear anything as aged-related. We halted talking anymore until he was sent to the hospital in Jun, he was diagnosed with delirium and needed special medical treatment. He never feels curious about the updated news and was reluctant to eat or drink after taking the medicine, always sleeping for a whole day. He chose to adopt the kindest method to leave us, no more burden for us, he was our angel in our family.