*poof*... and another one bites the dust
Jan. 11th, 2009 02:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyrasantae
My uncle Sing is gone from this world.
This is what I know from what my mom was told by Uncle Sunny, which she has then told me.
Uncle Sunny called his house I think yesterday, I guess just wondering what was up. No one answered after a few calls, so he decided to go check him out in person. No one answered the door, but Sunny has a key so he let himself in and found the body. It was already pretty dead so 911 took it to the morgue. Anyway.
Uncle Sing's best friend, Mr. Soong, and my other relatives in Vancouver spent until 3AM last night evacuating the valuables from the house before the house gets hit by looters, to sort out later since he didn't leave a will.
We do not know when he died. Given the incomplete description that my mom gave me, I am going to guess that it was probably on the evening of 2. Jan. The following supports my conjecture:
There was a pile of mail inside the door.
There was an opened box of food on the kitchen counter; they were the leftovers we brought back from lunch on 1. Jan. My uncle LOVED restaurant food so it's unlikely that he took that out to eat any later than the day after we brought it.
There was also an empty soup bowl and an eggshell. After my mom and I arrived back in Calgary on the night of 1. Jan, my parents called him to let him know that we were home. My dad had sort of a man-to-man talk with him, and he suggested that he should try eating something healthy and make egg soup like my grandpa used to. This was the last time my family talked to him.
The lights were on in the bathroom and the bedroom where he was found; this makes me think that it was after dark. My mom said something about vomit, so maybe he was suffering from chemotherapy side-effects. He always kept an irregular bachelors' schedule so he could have been making a late lunch at the time; he usually had pastries or cake for breakfast anyway.
I suppose that he could have instead passed away after my dad's phone call, but it seems unlikely that he'd be getting food at midnight, especially since we had hurriedly made him some soup right before we had to go to the airport.
He was found with swollen feet hanging off the edge of his bed and hands clasped together. He had had a chemotherapy session on 31. Dec and came back from it very very weak; during the last few days of my time at his house, if he wasn't eating or sleeping, he was sitting on the couch with his hands like that and his head bowed, eyes shut, nodding off, but he said that it eased the pain. I can only imagine that that was what he was doing when the life left him. The swollen feet are from the chemical treatment. I saw them before I left.
A piece of information that would have helped eliminate the 1. Jan possibility would be whether he was found still hooked up to the chemotherapy equipment; a nurse was supposed to come by in the morning to take it out but given the road conditions that week the nurse might not have even been able to get to the house.
I can't imagine how much pain he must have been in. Even though he was in pain, he would boast about how long he could go between taking painkillers. Even though he was so weak, he wanted to drive out to his friends and help them fix their garages (which had collapsed under the heavy snow). (We were VERY adamant that he did NOT attempt this.)
He was always a fighter; never for a moment did he want to believe that he didn't have long to live. He didn't want to face death. He never asked his doctors about his life expectancy; instead he'd ask how much he'd healed. You could say that he was so naïve that he took the doctors' mere encouragements as absolute truths. He was completely convinced that he was going to return to his former life. He refused to prepare himself for the eventuality. In April, we had asked my cousin Wayne, who is a lawyer, to approach him and offer his services in helping him write a will. I guess nothing came out of it.
If only he had at least left his estate to *somebody*, then we'd have time to perhaps eBay some of his junk (he was a junk collector and there was definitely some pretty vintage stuff in his house), and recoup some of the funeral costs.
He was quite a miser too; always buying junk and eating whatever food was cheap, often at the expense of a healthy diet. The only things he'd spend large sums of money on were big-screen TVs and DVD players. He'd only ever buy bootleg copies of movies; never getting the real DVDs to actually take advantage of the picture quality of his TV. We told him to spend more on himself, to eat at nicer restaurants, buy some legit movies, treat people for dinner. Return all of the favours that everyone else has done you. It's not like any of us have greedy eyes on his life savings and you don't get to use it when you're dead anyway. But no. "I bought this nice new TV and this nice new couch; of course I spend money on myself!"
Also in April, when we visited right after his diagnosis, he confided in my mother the location of a secret stash of money within the house, inside what used to be his personal darkroom (now a... you guessed it, a room of junk). Fortunately she had told Uncle Sunny about it, and they *almost* couldn't find it. (The money that was in the stash isn't even enough to pay for a year's worth of my tuition and rent.)
As of right now, we don't even know how we're going to get the money to even have a funeral or to buy him a resting place (we're thinking of a spot right behind where my grandparents are on the same colmbarium).
It's sad to think that my mom, my sister, and I could have been the last people to see him alive. And as I sit here crying for the fourth or maybe fifth time today, I can't help thinking that maybe I've become more... emotionally "human" after going to Finland.
He may not have ever really gotten along with his family (ever since he was a young boy), but he will be dearly missed by all of us.
This is what I know from what my mom was told by Uncle Sunny, which she has then told me.
Uncle Sunny called his house I think yesterday, I guess just wondering what was up. No one answered after a few calls, so he decided to go check him out in person. No one answered the door, but Sunny has a key so he let himself in and found the body. It was already pretty dead so 911 took it to the morgue. Anyway.
Uncle Sing's best friend, Mr. Soong, and my other relatives in Vancouver spent until 3AM last night evacuating the valuables from the house before the house gets hit by looters, to sort out later since he didn't leave a will.
We do not know when he died. Given the incomplete description that my mom gave me, I am going to guess that it was probably on the evening of 2. Jan. The following supports my conjecture:
There was a pile of mail inside the door.
There was an opened box of food on the kitchen counter; they were the leftovers we brought back from lunch on 1. Jan. My uncle LOVED restaurant food so it's unlikely that he took that out to eat any later than the day after we brought it.
There was also an empty soup bowl and an eggshell. After my mom and I arrived back in Calgary on the night of 1. Jan, my parents called him to let him know that we were home. My dad had sort of a man-to-man talk with him, and he suggested that he should try eating something healthy and make egg soup like my grandpa used to. This was the last time my family talked to him.
The lights were on in the bathroom and the bedroom where he was found; this makes me think that it was after dark. My mom said something about vomit, so maybe he was suffering from chemotherapy side-effects. He always kept an irregular bachelors' schedule so he could have been making a late lunch at the time; he usually had pastries or cake for breakfast anyway.
I suppose that he could have instead passed away after my dad's phone call, but it seems unlikely that he'd be getting food at midnight, especially since we had hurriedly made him some soup right before we had to go to the airport.
He was found with swollen feet hanging off the edge of his bed and hands clasped together. He had had a chemotherapy session on 31. Dec and came back from it very very weak; during the last few days of my time at his house, if he wasn't eating or sleeping, he was sitting on the couch with his hands like that and his head bowed, eyes shut, nodding off, but he said that it eased the pain. I can only imagine that that was what he was doing when the life left him. The swollen feet are from the chemical treatment. I saw them before I left.
A piece of information that would have helped eliminate the 1. Jan possibility would be whether he was found still hooked up to the chemotherapy equipment; a nurse was supposed to come by in the morning to take it out but given the road conditions that week the nurse might not have even been able to get to the house.
I can't imagine how much pain he must have been in. Even though he was in pain, he would boast about how long he could go between taking painkillers. Even though he was so weak, he wanted to drive out to his friends and help them fix their garages (which had collapsed under the heavy snow). (We were VERY adamant that he did NOT attempt this.)
He was always a fighter; never for a moment did he want to believe that he didn't have long to live. He didn't want to face death. He never asked his doctors about his life expectancy; instead he'd ask how much he'd healed. You could say that he was so naïve that he took the doctors' mere encouragements as absolute truths. He was completely convinced that he was going to return to his former life. He refused to prepare himself for the eventuality. In April, we had asked my cousin Wayne, who is a lawyer, to approach him and offer his services in helping him write a will. I guess nothing came out of it.
If only he had at least left his estate to *somebody*, then we'd have time to perhaps eBay some of his junk (he was a junk collector and there was definitely some pretty vintage stuff in his house), and recoup some of the funeral costs.
He was quite a miser too; always buying junk and eating whatever food was cheap, often at the expense of a healthy diet. The only things he'd spend large sums of money on were big-screen TVs and DVD players. He'd only ever buy bootleg copies of movies; never getting the real DVDs to actually take advantage of the picture quality of his TV. We told him to spend more on himself, to eat at nicer restaurants, buy some legit movies, treat people for dinner. Return all of the favours that everyone else has done you. It's not like any of us have greedy eyes on his life savings and you don't get to use it when you're dead anyway. But no. "I bought this nice new TV and this nice new couch; of course I spend money on myself!"
Also in April, when we visited right after his diagnosis, he confided in my mother the location of a secret stash of money within the house, inside what used to be his personal darkroom (now a... you guessed it, a room of junk). Fortunately she had told Uncle Sunny about it, and they *almost* couldn't find it. (The money that was in the stash isn't even enough to pay for a year's worth of my tuition and rent.)
As of right now, we don't even know how we're going to get the money to even have a funeral or to buy him a resting place (we're thinking of a spot right behind where my grandparents are on the same colmbarium).
It's sad to think that my mom, my sister, and I could have been the last people to see him alive. And as I sit here crying for the fourth or maybe fifth time today, I can't help thinking that maybe I've become more... emotionally "human" after going to Finland.
He may not have ever really gotten along with his family (ever since he was a young boy), but he will be dearly missed by all of us.
