Writing about my dad’s death, for the first time
By: Emily Ch'Ng
Tags: Death, Bereavement, Dads And Daughters, Grief And Loss, Family

Writing about my dad’s death, for the first time

10 years ago today, my dad passed away. I particularly wanted to write about this today because I had promised him I would write his story. But I never have.

Back when I was 18 years old, sitting by his hospital bed, asking him to recount tales of his childhood, scribbling down everything he said into my notebook, I was simultaneously fantasising about my book on his life lining the shelves of Waterstones, and becoming a published author at 28 years old.

Well, I’m now 28 and this is the first time I’ve ever written about his death. I’ve made various attempts before to write about his life, like mulling over book titles and what to name him in a story (it felt too raw to use his real name). But everything was either half-baked, or something emotional knocked me down and halted my motivation to continue.

I then decided I didn’t have enough information — I needed to first gather more content and material. My first real stab at this was when I went to Malaysia, my parents’ home country, for a holiday in 2014.

I just had a bad breakup, so this trip became an opportunity for me to ‘find myself’. As cheesy as that sounds, it worked. It was the first time I really saw Malaysia as a country and not just somewhere my extended family lived. I explored my dad’s roots and reconnected with my heritage.

I interviewed my aunties and anyone who had memories of my father when he was growing up. We went to Penang, his hometown, and I took lots of photographs of the streets he would have walked down, the house he grew up in, where he went to school, the hospital he was born in. I collected a plethora of material!

But I still hadn’t written anything.

I also put off writing about it, simply because I didn’t feel like my writing skills could do his story justice. I was young, full of ambition and ideas… but not a lot of skill. I thought, if I worked first and gained some more life experience I could improve my writing skills and I wouldn’t embarrass myself or his memory.

I now work in communications for the government, have produced award-winning content, and have even ghost-written blog posts for ministers. I definitely have much better writing skills than when I was 18.

But as factual as all of this is, I also used this as a reason to delay writing about my dad and procrastinate. “I’m not good enough yet. I’m not ready.” Excuses.

I’ve now reached the 10 year anniversary of his passing, and I still haven’t written a thing. So now is the time — no more excuses.

It’s taken me 10 years to be able to pluck up the courage, and also have that emotional distance. Time is a healer, but you never know when the medicine will take effect.

With this significant milestone, I believe this is the first step I’m taking towards fulfilling my promise and writing dad’s story. Even if it’s terrible, and I never publish a book, at least I’ll have created something out of the grief I felt losing him at such a young age, immortalising him through the power of the written language, and paying homage to his life — the sacrifices he made to give me and my sister a better life — and never forgetting the life he had.

A photo of my dad with a kangaroo, and a beaded monkey he bought me over 14 years ago which I’ve treasured ever since.

“He’s gone”

10 January, 10.42am. Dad was pronounced dead.

I believe that’s the time written on his death certificate, but to be honest it doesn’t quite matter. He had in fact died much earlier, but time of death is recorded based on when the doctor arrives and pronounces it. I had learnt something new that day.

My mother found him first. Possibly around 10.30am — I can’t be certain. She gently shook me and my sister awake, saying softly, “I think he’s gone.”

In that moment, I cannot recall being in control of myself. I did not make any choices or had any thoughts. My body simply pulled me out of the bed, and towards his.

He was still.

I touched his face. It was still slightly warm. I began to well up. I was torn between wanting to kiss him goodbye, and also feeling revulsion over the idea of kissing a dead body.

But I reasoned, this is my dad. I have to kiss him goodbye.

His skin felt so thin, but familiar. I knew that skin, its texture. So feeling it only slightly warm, the sign of a body that’s not in its natural state of being alive, was so strange.

It was almost like my contact with him verified it. It had finally happened. He had died, and his body would now only get colder and colder.

The Royal Marsden hospital

Back in October 2008, we were told dad only have 3 months left to live. Funnily enough, this was actually good news.

Dad had, very unfortunately for us, initially misheard the doctor and told us he only had 3 weeks left.

This had devastated me. I remember hearing “3 weeks”, bursting into tears and having to leave the room. I went into some communal area at Sutton’s Royal Marsden Hospital on the wing dad was on. All I remember were some chairs, a water cooler, and the fact that some family members had followed me in.

As soon as I entered, I bent over and let out this terrible, raucous, animal scream. It erupted out from deep from within me. People were trying to get me to be quiet but it was impossible. I couldn’t be stifled, I couldn’t be silenced — I just felt pure pain, terrible raw emotion pouring out of my mouth. Echoing around this small hospital room.

My scream had shocked even me — but I would still continue to cry, doubled over into a ball. It sounds clichéd but I literally sank to my knees.

I believe this happened because my body simply gave up trying to hold itself up. It lost all energy, focusing its efforts to try and haphazardly handle this sudden intense level of grief. I’ve never felt that way before, and I’ve never experienced it since.

Simply put, my mind and body broke down at the news of only having my dad for 3 weeks longer.

So you can imagine how happy we were to then hear he actually had 3 months left.

When it comes to counting down the days of how long you have on this earth with loved ones, every single minute, every second, is a blessing.

Coming home

You see, dad hadn’t told us how sick he was. I had rushed back home from Leeds, where I was in my first year of university, with only the news that dad had to come back home from his holiday in Malaysia months early; the cancer had spread.

Dad never wanted me to go to Leeds, because it was too far and he wouldn’t have the strength to drive up and visit me. He instead wanted me to go to my second-choice university, Royal Holloway, University of London. He had loved its beautiful Founders Building — and how close it was from our home in Wallington, south London. But I couldn’t go to it just for him — Leeds was by far a more competitive and better university for me. But this feeling of guilt, of not going to the university he wanted me to, still stays with me to this day.

Another memory of mine that never fails to make me cry, is my last ever sight of dad standing up. I was being driven by my sister and her boyfriend (now husband) to take me to university. As we were pulling out of our driveway, all I could see, through my tears and the black lines of the back window of my sister’s car, was my papa, standing in our doorway, waving goodbye to me as I waved back.

Dad was losing his youngest daughter to the natural course of simply growing up and moving out of home. His eldest daughter was already living out of home with her boyfriend and in the process of buying their first house. His wife, my mother, was divorcing him for another man. He didn’t have much left for him at home, so he decided to take a 3-month holiday to Malaysia and spend it with his siblings who he’s not lived with since he left in 1982 to make a life for himself and his family in the UK.

So I thought dad was relatively healthy. But he never told us he had found out, I think as far back as August, that his cancer had spread to his spine. He was in intense pain, and he kept it entirely to himself.

But it was when he was in Malaysia, sitting in his sister’s house, that he realised the pain was unbearable, the cancer was spreading too fast, and as a result, he had to face facts and cut his holiday short to come back home to the UK — to die.

Despite the trauma and stress of the secrecy behind his health, how lonely and painful that 13 hour flight from KL to London must have been — I’m glad he got to see his beloved family in Malaysia, his sisters, his brother-in-law, his precious nieces and nephews, and of course his mother.

Since dad has passed, my Ah mah — (Chinese for grandmother on the father’s side) — is still alive at age 92, and has outlived 2 of her sons.

In a way, I am glad dad at least got to see his family back in his home country one more time. Home and family have always been incredibly important to dad. In fact, he had actually requested to die at our home in Wallington, much to our distress.

Selfish sounding, I know, but I didn’t know how I’d be able to live in a house where my father had died. But in the end, towards the end of his life, taking care of dad was simply beyond us. We didn’t have the medical expertise or the equipment to be able to give him an easy send-off.

Dad was starting to suffer, we began to panic, and we made the call. We phoned for an ambulance to take him to a hospice.

The hospice

Even though the actual date he passed away was 10 January, the 9 January is just as hard a time for me. That’s the day we had to rush him to the hospice so he could get proper medical care.

That’s also the day where I’ll never be able to forget the nightmarish sound of dad’s last breaths.

We were sleeping in the hospice for the night. It was nearly pitch-black, and my sister, her boyfriend and I sat in the communal area just outside of his bedroom, being unable to do anything with ourselves, but listen to his hoarse and laboured breathing echoing throughout the building.

That noise would haunt me and my nightmares for years.

It was a result from a combination of mucus building up in his system which he couldn’t expel, and the body automatically, desperately, gasping for air, trying to pull in as much oxygen as possible into a decaying body. It produced a hollow, rattling noise that pervaded the hospice. Even from a distance, I could hear his limp lips fluttering whilst his mouth struggled to suck in and push out air.

Dad was unconscious — he was being pumped with a continuous supply of morphine to relieve the pain. He was already beyond what we would consider ‘alive’.

So arguably, dad had got his wish of dying at home. He had effectively already passed away the moment the paramedics lifted him out of our house and into the ambulance to take him to the hospice. It was in the house I grew up in, our home, where I shared my last words with him, where I said my true goodbyes.

This is my worst and best memory of him. The one that never fails to make me cry. My dad’s last words to me.

His last words

For 2 months or so, we were taking care of dad at home. We pushed all the furniture aside and had set up a hospital bed in our living room. We’d take it in turns to feed, clean, and simply spend time with him.

But then at night time, I would go into my bedroom and pray everyday “please let us have Christmas. Please let us have one more Christmas with him.” Even though we were told “3 months” it was still completely touch and go. It was only an estimate. So when it came to Christmas and New Years Eve of 2008, I was constantly hung up on the idea that these festive times, where family usually come together, would be marred by his death.

Thankfully, dad lasted through the holiday season so I can still enjoy Christmas.

During his last few days, I fed dad his preferred food of Carr’s cheese biscuits dipped in Milo (a brand of chocolate drink popular in Malaysia), and poking it into his mouth. Dad had lost his ability to chew, so the Milo would make the biscuit soggy and easily digestible. I’d also help plaster his right eye down for him and administer his eye drops because he’d lost his ability to blink in one eye.

Dad was first diagnosed with cancer sometime in 1997 or 1998 — I was only 7 or 8, so I don’t remember the exact years. To remove his tumours, dad had to have a large portion of neck tissue removed and in the process lost the nerves on the right side of his face, so he constantly looked like a stroke victim.

Dad had nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Cancer behind the nose. Rather rare in this country, but incredibly common in China. So, dad’s cancer was likely a result of genes. He never smoked, never took drugs (but did drink the occasional red wine). Ultimately, he lived a healthy, sporty, lifestyle — was a Liverpool supporter (because he loved the Beatles) — and enjoyed taking care of himself.

To be honest, when I took care of him I wish I had done a better job. I still feel guilty that I would sometimes take a break from my duties, sacrificing moments with my dad, and run into my bedroom to spend time with my then-boyfriend. Puppy love. Overall, probably not worth it, but, I was a teenager so I guess I have to give myself some slack.

But he appreciated all the time we spent together. Of course he did. He was my daddy, and he did everything he could for me.

He would drive me to school, save money so I could have a better future, cook me my food, discipline me, teach me wrong from right. He told me, “fail to plan, plan to fail”. Nowadays at work, colleagues call me a meticulous planner.

He loved me and my sister, and would do anything to create and protect our happiness. He moved countries for us. So I will never stop crying, whenever I remember his last words to me: