The Sheltering Sky

"How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
– Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

A-Gong’s room at the hospice overlooks a lush green hill with a little road through it that is frequented by bicycles. Post-typhoon weather is still a little windy but the sun is pretty much always out and in the last 10 years, the pollution in Taipei has dramatically reduced so the sky can be very clear on a breezy summer’s day like this.

I’ve been coming the hospice every single day since I got in last Monday night. A-Gong is basically asleep most of the time, and is pretty much too weak to get up by himself and can now hardly talk or eat solid food. He is often wearing an oxygen mask and he has several tubes stuck inside him, every move seems so hard and painful, and we feed him mashed fruit and vegetables through a syringe. He laps in and out of consciousness, but every time he sees me or my sister or one of my cousins he always squeeze us a huge warm smile. On a good day he’d say something cheeky or pull a funny face, and make fun of things. Despite being bed ridden, I think he is generally in a really good spirit, and has an incredible amount of will to keep going and hold on. Although sometimes I wish he didn’t have to put up with all the physical discomforts he is in, who is to tell me that he isn’t in a fit mental condition to embrace what he still see as being beautiful in this world? We all know that nothing is limitless.

Though we don’t get to interact much in terms of chatting very much any more, I feel that its given me so much relief and comfort just being here with him and keeping him company. My family will never be the same again, but I feel that I am really happy with the way things went in the last two weeks. Its been a mostly happy and quality time I’ve spent here. I’ve had so much time to remember and reflect and think about the values and legacies he’s passed onto me and my family. If there is anything called closure, this may be it.

I leave in two days time, flying all the way back to London to the rat race again, carrying on the way it was, as if time just froze for 13 days. Back to the alternative universe that I live in when I am surrounded by ‘Western’ people and where I continue to carve out a path on my own that just seems so strange and lonely to my family who are always just so ready to offer me love and protection. I don’t know what it is about me that just can’t keep still.

Anyway I’ve had some time to update the blog: if you’re interested there are photos etc from the camping weekend in Wiltshire, a mystery weekend along the Kennet-Avon canal & Bath, my One-Woman invasion of Normandy, hiking in Somerset and Cheddar Gorge, and a wild Roller Disco night out in Vauxhall.

See you back in London.