my aunt says, over and over again on the phone, it's okay lah, min zhi, just remember the good times - over and over again - but then she's crying terribly as she says it. but remembering the happy times just makes me think what a good uncle he was - and that a good man like him is dead, and that we'll never have those good times again, and the fact that he is now lying in a coffin, and that the children asked, how did ah kong get inside? that no one ever looks anything like themselves in a coffin their faces stiff under all the embalming - they never look like what they did in life - and it was life i wanted to share in and wheni think that i didn't have more time to spend with him - that i was away so much - there's always a lot of guilt about that - being away from home while other people lived at home and contributed to housekeeping and i am away and dependent and an only child so there's no other children at home to take care of things when one day it may be my own parents - and that the reverse is harder - for parents to see their adult children die - my uncle's mother is still alive - i saw her a few times at the hospital in january - and that is not bearable - once it would have been - perhaps a little more bearable wouldn't it? in the "old days" when infant mortality was high - women lost children all the time - but to be 90 years old and frail in courage and being alive to see your adult son die before you - hector and priam. and that i was only home for such a short time in january and should have tried to go home earlier or maybe take the semester off to be helpful at home, that i thought he was going to live when i came back and then when he got worse i was afraid he would die before i could get home to see him again and everyone said try and come home quickly quickly as soon as you can because he's weakening and now it is too late.