let go

“The world is won by those who let it go.”
— Lao Tzu

This one is for my uncle. He didn't want to let the world go for a long time I think. When his mind started to deteriorate after his stroke, he decided to write down his memoirs while he could, including the entire family history. The children born to his parents, even those who did not survive, all of their birth years and why they couldn't make it. His memory of his mother trying to leave them because it was one too many mouths to feed. His underlying resentment towards his dad. His pride and slight envy of my dad, his younger brother, who got to go to college and make it in the city.

He shoved his memories into my hands four years ago when we visited. There were several notebooks' worth. By that point he had devolved into a childlike mind, repeating things four or five times to anyone in the room, whining about wanting juice, complaining to my dad about how their dad was the worst, even though my grandfather passed away decades ago.

I didn't say much, I knew only passable mandarin and even less about my dad's side of the family and their rural life. So I flipped through the pages while my dad listened patiently to his brother's ramblings. I remember grimacing at some of the cliches in the writing, the grandiose-ness Chinese writers are prone to. I remember the shock of how little I knew about my dad's life, how he never spoke of the siblings he never knew or knew for only a little while, and how poor people can be, so much so they die from it. I remember the elegant, elegant penmanship, a mark of scholarship in Chinese culture. It belied the fact that my uncle was deprived of the education he deserved, the education my dad was lucky enough to get because of his being born a decade later, after the cultural revolution.

My dad took the notebooks as we were called to lunch. He took off his glasses and tried to hide the tears. I looked away. It was too much to see. I think he always felt guilty of the opportunities he had that he knew his brother should've also had. I think in a time when they were so steeped in poverty that parental care was a luxury, not a right, his brother took care of him more than maybe their parents could have. Once, when my dad was a teenager, they both rode miles into town to get my dad new glasses, on the way back my dad was so exhausted he said to my uncle: I don't think I can go on anymore. So my uncle went into a store, bought a rope, tied their bikes together, and dragged my dad's bike behind him the rest of the way. I don't think that story made it into the notebooks. But I knew it was the one my dad was thinking of when he was flipping through them.

I stayed away from reading the notebooks after that, they made me cry and my family is easily embarrassed by displays of sentimentality. I did, however, photograph almost every page on my digital camera, because I knew my dad would want to read them, because I knew after my uncle died very few people would, because I knew there was a great likelihood they could even be carelessly thrown out.

Because they might be let go. Because they scream my uncle's desperate attempt not to.

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