Blood and Water

My Grandfather passed away in 2007. May he rest in peace.

I have to confess, at the time I was told this information - around Christmas time, my reaction was quite muted. Obviously, I had expected myself to feel sad, but instead it was just sort of a "Oh. Well. That sucks." This sort of thought is fine if say, you've just dropped your coat in a puddle, but for a relative dying, it's not appropriate.

I felt awful for not feeling more broken up about it. Selfish, right?

But finally, now, I think I understand why I felt that way.

You see, I came to England at the age of four (and a bit), and although we had had several visits back to China, I had really not had that much contact with my relatives over there, and pre-occupied as I was with being cool and being as white as I could be (let's be brutally honest here, for the most part, Secondary School was a giant well of low self-esteem and awkwardness). I didn't really think all that much of all the people in China who we had left behind.

Now though, I feel like I'm older, and perhaps a bit wiser (debatable!), I can truly appreciate the meaning that "blood is thicker than water". Now, I'm not sure whether this implies that if you aren't relatives to someone then you share water, instead of blood. Well, I guess this is true in that 70% of a humans composition is water and this will be shared since water doesn't contain DNA...but...let's get off this tangent before I digress totally.

When I went back to my home town Urumqi, we went to visit my Grandfather's grave. In China this is called 扫墓, this translates literally to "Sweeping of the tomb". It is tradition to visit and clean the grave of your relatives, we poured water over the gravestone, and cleared away the bits of mud and dust that had gathered. Then, we lit some incense, and made offerings of fruits, and mooncakes (since it was the mid-autumn festival), and also some sweets which were his favourites.

At this point, it all hit me.

It didn't matter how long I was apart from him for, or really, how much I had seen him in the short years of my life. To him, I would have been his grandchild, and he would have felt the same towards me whether I had been in China or not. This sort of unconditional love is the reserve of family only, and it made me realise just how important family is.

We then burned some paper money, to send to him in heaven, so he could live a comfortable afterlife. The flames licked at the mock notes, and they gradually curled and turned to ashes. A small breeze lifted a few ashes into the air.

My cousin said this was a sign that my Grandfather was comfortable in heaven. He said that if the deceased needed money, the ashes would float upwards. My intellectual mind told me this was all gibberish, but it brought warmth to my heart to know that, maybe, he was up there, having a good time, and watching over all of us, and at the end of the day, that's what's important.

I searched back in my memory for impressions of my Grandfather. He wasn't a particularly large man, but you could not call him frail. He had the sort of presence, and deliberacy and precision of movement, that those long time practitioners of kung fu are blessed with. I remember him being a gentle person as well, quick to laugh, slow to anger.

Some particular memories popped up at me - ones I won't ever forget - these are my link to him, and I will keep them in my heart forever. I remember once, there was a terrible thunderstorm over our village. The thunder shook the house, and I cowered in the living room, too scared to even move. The particulars become blurry now, but I think what happened was that he came over and put his hands on my shoulders, and he said he would channel his strength into me. Stupid I know right? But, then, I wasn't scared anymore.

The same unconditional love and welcome was displayed by all the family we re-united with. On the one hand, you could say it was expected because we are family, but on the other hand, if there were no blood ties between us, you would have said I was a stranger to them.

It's odd, because before this trip, I wouldn't have said I felt anything was missing, but, in seeing all my uncles and aunties, sharing stories of school in England and hanging out with my cousins, I felt like a hole was filled in me, without me ever knowing it was there before. Before we left to return to England, I made promises to keep in touch with them (like I did every time), but this time, I will keep that promise, for sure.

There are a lot of people in this world who take their family for granted, who get tired of seeing that annoying uncle every few months, or can't stop fighting with a cousin whenever the two are together. This is my message to them, as someone who can only see their relatives once every few years, telling them to treasure what they have - you don't know how good you have it.