Santa Rosa CA
Montgomery High School
About one year ago, the muddled gray sky poured forth tears as I trudged across a grassy pathway towards my father's burial site. My black boots became instantly soaked with the raging and emotional cry that had let loose in the heavens above that fated spring morning.
The rain had chronicled the last days of his life, as well as the hurting and anguish that resulted from that final day. The celestial showers eased its presence into the day of his diagnosis four months before his passing, as well as during his memorial service and his funeral.
In fact, it rained relentlessly for fifty straight days after my father's death.
Every morning I would awake to the pitter-pattering of a drizzle and every evening, I would fall asleep to the throbbing of an insatiable tempest. It wasn't until one particular evening, not quite unlike the rest, that I had the sudden vision of a shadow of a man with heavy eyelids, waiting to be spoon-fed by me at the kitchen table. This withering, terminally-ill person was my father, a soul who undeniably suffered more pain and endured more sacrifices than a human lifetime should know, yet possessed the courage to smile on his dying day. It was then that I finally realized that my father, Sean Shu Ren Wang, embodied the very essences of a true champion; my father will always be a superhero.
My dad was not a tall man, nor was he a particularly strong one. He could not fly or read minds, nor could he become invisible and hide a secret identity under a stretchy costume. My father was simply a short, lean, and dark-skinned fellow with an exceptionally cheery disposition that had a tendency to, instead of slip through the cracks, ooze out with renewed vigor. He grew up in a rural town in mainland China, and was the oldest son in his family. He worked very hard for all of his siblings, at anywhere from a busy restaurant kitchen to the crowded classroom at his small college, where he planned and began to pursue his dreams.
To my father, America had always been his promised land. He never hesitated after he made his decision all those years ago to transform his children's destiny and find a way to come to this country.
Once he arrived, you could not ever hear a complaint escape his lips. My dad never complained of his 13-hour work days, or of his 7-day work weeks. He never complained of a bad cold, a lost car key, or of anything malicious that came his way. At the restaurant we had owned for the decade up to his death, he never ceased to brighten the day of each and every person who walked through our double-doors, customer or not. His vibrant eyes would crinkle into an unmistakable grin as he would jump down from behind the counter and give a hearty shout, while placing his hand on their shoulder: "Heeey! Boss! Wow, it's great to see you again!"
In effect, my father was known by all of our customers and many throughout the community as "The Happy Guy." He wasn't about doing business, but about making friends, anybody age 2 to age 90. He was about making happiness.
When he was diagnosed with end stage pancreatic cancer in October of 2005, the day before my mother's birthday, he had already lost fifty pounds off his small, 160-pound frame. The morning after his diagnosis, however, he woke up early, right as the powerful rays of sunlight shot through the horizon. He declared in a shout that was nearly superhuman: "I am not that easy to push over! I will fight until I win!"
In the weeks preceding his death, he got paler and paler, with his sunken eyes yellowing by the minute. The shots of morphine and procaine rained into his blood like the sprays outside the murky hospital-room window, but when asked if he felt pain, he would muster up a strained smile and whisper, "No, no." Every day he would declare that "Today is going to be a new day!"
Among his many influences in his perpetually optimistic outlook on life, one of his greatest was always his pride in being Chinese and all its traditions. My father never forgot his roots in China, and he never let us forget our ethnic culture either. He would roam the restaurant kitchen, happily whistling Chinese Opera tunes in a bold, unabashed manner and explained situations to me in simple Chinese proverbs. He never wanted to hear one inauspicious word, nothing of "death," or "pain," or of anything unhappy and foreboding. My dad was always searching for that sunny day, and if he couldn't find it himself, he would, instead, create it for someone nearby.
In fact, at his very last visit for treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center, he shocked his doctor to such an extent that changed both his doctor's opinion of a mortal forever. As he stumbled little by little into Dr. Wolff's office, his doctor's eyes widened as he grabbed his desk, utterly speechless.
"Sean! Wow, this is such a surprise! How in heavens name did you make it in here?"
"I walked."
"I can't believe this! I have never had a patient in your condition who could even stand! And you? Walk into my office? Sean, you really are a man. No, listen and remember this: You are my hero."
My father was a true superhero in that he believed in living for life itself. If he cheered up one person, he would immediately set off for another. He endured, without complaint, many great pains and torments in his short life because, as he always told me, whining won't cure any disease. Instead, he would walk to the front door and spread his arms wide like a soaring eagle and say: "This is America! You see this sunshine? You see the green hills? Do you see any clouds or rain? This is what it means to be alive!"
Looking outside now, I can see the rolling green hills of America, bursting with new life. I can see damp streets and dewy foliage. I can even see the light breaking through rainy clouds. But most importantly, I can see the silhouette of an immortal superhero, walking off into the sunny horizon.
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