Saturday, July 05, 2003
Where: Home, sweet home, Hong Kong
When: 4:32am, local time
I wanted to blog tonight because I'm leaving for Brisbane tomorrow and had to post at least once from Hong Kong, but as usual it seems events elsewhere have rather curtailed plans for a normal, casual update.
My grandfather passed away a few hours ago.
Most of you probably do remember me saying that he was very ill (indeed, he's pretty much the only reason why I'm scheduled to fly to Brisbane at all), and so it didn't come as a surprise. In truth the only surprise was that he lasted so long; initial assessments when he was admitted over a month ago indicated that he should have only lasted a couple of weeks at best. Though this did prolong his suffering somewhat -- his cancer had all but taken over by the time they detected it and aside from being virtually untreatable was hurting him rather badly -- on the bright side, he did have enough time to see all of his children and his grandchildren one last time (my sister and I being the lone exceptions, sadly) and they had time to let go.
As for how I'm feeling (not that I want to be all self-centred, but it tends to be a common question) I'm actually surprised again at how I'm taking it... or rather, how I'm not. Which is that it hasn't affected me at all yet. I did say when I first heard of his illness that I didn't seem to be affected by it -- it didn't seem real -- and the same is true now. I'm sure that I will be in a completely different state when I get there, but until then I've kept things together almost too well. I almost feel that it's wrong to be so completely unaffected by something like that, some guilt tugging away at me whenever I speak to anyone there in Australia. Should I be? Am I being insensitive by not reacting unduly? I'm really not sure.
Either way, there isn't much more to say here. I'll probably blog another update from the airport before I leave (thank god for airport-wide wireless internet) with more of the trivial notes from Hong Kong, and I'll definitely find a way to send in updates from Brisbane, when I will no doubt be unable to avoid talking about events over there. And so until I get more direct information, I'll leave it at that.
Posted at 4:39 AM
