Windward Review Volume 19 (2021): Empathy and Entropy

a powdery-way. Did Grandma powder his face? He looked like my grandfather
and not like my grandfather. My cousins covered their giggles as
they ran around me, breaking into my thoughts and urging me to go play,
but I was content to stand next to my grandfather in a moment of silence.
From what I still have left in my memories, I was a little afraid of him
before. He was quiet and serious and smiled little. Whenever he visited,
he sat upstairs in a chair in front of the TV and smoked, cigarette after
cigarette, not moving until it was time for dinner. I think he spoke maybe
ten words to me when he was alive. Whenever I was told to get him for
dinner, he would just tap the ashes off the last cigarette and stick it into
the ashtray, stand up, and went downstairs to eat.
After my grandfather’s death, my grandparents’ house became
my grandmother’s house. Everyone still went there for Chinese New Year
reunion dinners and long school holidays. I remember the tall, iron four
poster bed that I used to do a little jump to climb into. The iron bars would
shake, making a ringing sound. The biggest room in the house stored a
mountain of bedrolls, blankets, and pillows. It was a room where I used
to play in with my cousins and once was so exhausted that I fell asleep
on one of the bedrolls one of my cousins unrolled for me. I remember the
chickens and ducks in my grandmother’s backyard pecking at seeds and
weeds. I remember the hen that flew at me, fleeing from its fate. I remember
when there was a shortage of beds, laying in my grandmother’s
bed staring at old pictures and wondering when she was going to show
up to sleep and then falling asleep and waking up in the morning to find
her already gone.
I remember when my cousin Hwa Yong and I received a firework
each. One of those long tubes that shot out colored fireballs into the sky.
We were excited as little boys with sticks, not able to wait till night, we
used them as walking sticks in our imaginary adventures and poked at
flying insects, plants, and each other. By the time night came around, the
part that must be lit to make it work had disintegrated. Left with cardboard
tubes, we continued playing with them until the next day when I
whacked the gate too hard that it bent in the middle, leaving us staggering
about giggling madly.
My grandmother passed away when she was ninety-seven years
old. Although, if it was counted in traditional Chinese years, she would
have been one hundred. I think she would have liked to have lived for a
century. My grandmother’s house is now silent and closed. All her children
have grown and moved on with their own families. Only echoes of the
days past remain in the hearts of all who loved her.
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Empathy / Entropy