My father

 A few weeks ago I visited my father at the cemetery. I wondered what he would say and how he would react upon knowing you were a boy. In Chinese culture, having a boy is preferred as it is deemed to pass on the family bloodline and surname. I started imagining how he would treat you if he was still around.

About a week ago, I was driving home with your mother and we had just passed my mother's home, where I saw her walking slowly back home. It was night time, so I assumed she was returning from the pokies. I started thinking about what life would be like right now if my father hadn't passed away and if I hadn't of gotten married. I would be returning home, seeing my dad watching tv on the sofa. I would ask him where mum was and he would say the club. He would then ask me if I was hungry, as he always did, and offer to make me some food.

Even though he passed away almost two years ago now, memories of him still come up from time to time. The intensity of these memories can be strong enough to bring a tear to my eye. It's the first time I have had to deal with death up close. I was lucky in that no one close to me had died before this.

So I thought maybe now would be a good time to tell you about my father, your grandfather.

He was born in 1947 in a family where his father had many wives, so he had many siblings, some of which I have met. The story goes that when he was around 13, his family forced him to move to Hong Kong from China so he could get a good job and send money back to the family in China. He got a job washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant and sent money back to his family. Over time he managed to work his way up to being a waiter and then a manager in the restaurant. I can tell he suffered a lot by working from such a young age.

Maybe because of that, he was a very humble man. He was very quiet, a man of few words, and to me all it seemed like he ever wanted was to be a family man. He wanted the wife and two kids and he devoted his life to that. He only ever yelled at me once, and I remember it clearly. He was sleeping on the couch and I wanted him to play with me, so I kept calling him but he just wanted to sleep. When I had annoyed him enough, he yelled at me. I think he saw how scared I was so he never did it again.

He always put his children first ahead of himself. Every time my sister or I came home, the first question he would ask is if we were hungry or if we wanted something to eat. That was his way of saying he loved us. And he was an excellent cook. He learnt a few things during his time working in the restaurants, even though he never worked as a chef. He didn't cook for us until late in his career, because before that he worked six days a week.

Another example of putting us first was that we shared the family car. And every time I asked to use it he would always say yes. Even if he already had plans to use it, he would try to figure out a way around it.

In the late 1990's, he made the decision to move the family to Australia, because he had foreseen that China would take over Hong Kong and being ruled in a dictatorship was not good. He did this despite Australia being a totally foreign land, and none of us speaking English. But he learnt, and not only was he able to make a living and support the family, he bought the family home with just his own income. That's the home I grew up in and have a lot of memories of.

Unfortunately my mother did not treat him very well. She was definitely the aggressive one in the family. Along with subtle write-offs of my father, she would also launch direct attacks on him constantly. I wasn't faultless either. From my teenage years, I felt like my family had abandoned me so I started being reclusive and looking out only for myself. In hindsight, I could see that this was because my dad spent all his time working to make money for the family, and my mother was just a rather selfish person. So I felt like I neglected my father and his love for a very very long time, and when it happens in your teenage years it tends to stick because those are your formative years.

To me, I wondered what my dad did in his previous life to deserve this. All he wanted was a close knit family but it felt like everyone neglected him at no fault of his own. The most important thing to him was sitting down and eating dinner as a family. It was very simple, but it was also all he wanted.

He was a simple man who never spent more than necessary on himself. He would wear the cheapest shoes, the cheapest clothes, and eat the cheapest food. He kept overnight food in the fridge for days and would eat that, whilst making food fresh for us. He sacrificed himself for his family, and maybe that's what caused his illness in the end because it had to do with his bowels.

On the day he died, a large part of me died as well. All of a sudden I felt lost. Even though he was 72 and I was 38, I felt like I had lost all the guidance in life and I had nowhere to go, nothing to do...nothing to live for. I would say the pain of losing a parent is an unimaginable pain. I had lost in love before with girls and I thought that pain was bad, but that was nothing compared to losing a parent. Suddenly I knew what mattered most in life - when it was too late.

I will forever remember calling for him to wake up as he lay dead on the hospital bed. You haven't heard silence in a room until you're next to someone whose heart has stopped beating. I called for him like I always had, and he had always responded. Until now. It was unfathomable and unreal to call him and for him not to wake up or respond. Not only was he not responding, but he would never respond again. I stayed next to his body for about three hours, until the nurse told me I had to go. But she offered for me to stay a bit longer if I wanted to, and I said no. I regret that now and wish I had stayed a bit longer.

It's unfortunate that death is a part of life, but I guess it's what makes life so special. We should cherish life and the life we've been given. I am forever indebted to my family, especially my father, for providing me with the opportunity to live in a first world country, for providing me with a better life, and for wanting me to have a better childhood than he did.

When I die, you may feel the same amount of pain. That's normal. But I want you to go on living. They say the death of our loved ones live on in our memories, and as long as you remember me, I will always be there.