on grief 🕯️

What a time. I found out that my Papa passed away, possibly months ago in Hong Kong. People I could call family, under different circumstances, tried to keep news of his death from me and other ppl he loved and cared about—just like they tried to stop us contacting him over the last months of his life. In a year of so much collective grieving, and in a span of weeks that's been heavy with loss for others around me, trying to meet this particular grief has been confusing, interrupted, heavy, incomplete.

Instagram: @aredotna, ‘a reflection, a cycle, a path, a song’ by @michellesyli

 I recently shared work about my rituals and my family, first in a big immersive space at the Opera House, then in an intimate space at Fairfield Gallery. With loved ones and chosen family around me, it was like a ritual in itself: a way to honour Papa's life and death through shared rememberings and grief, unorthodox maybe and untraditional, but that's always been us anyway. Our relationship and history, the dynamics and people involved, it was always complicated, sometimes traumatic, always confusing, but that's just been the way of it. Sometimes I think I’ve been ‘early-grieving’ my father since I was thirteen. With a 60-year age gap between us, mortality was always a common theme—in the end, I got 35 years with him.

When I was 19, I went to Hong Kong to see Papa for the first time in years, pretty much since the night with the police. I landed in the country a day before the date I gave him and forked out for a room at the airport hotel. That night, I popped a Xanax and wrote a letter to myself on the hotel stationery, geeing myself up for the meeting ahead. But also maybe subconsciously wanting to commemorate the moment. Maybe it felt right at the time to archive something. It was the first (conscious) mark on my map of my parents and the knots in their relationships and stories.

I would visit again over the years, often with Ollie, who Papa would end up calling his son. We talked on the phone more, wrote more cards, letters, and emails. Some of the cards and letters, I kept, but the emails—I wish I'd saved them. Papa loved using his phone. He'd send cute GIFs and stickers on WhatsApp, videos of animals in the wild, drone footage of epic landscapes or construction, people doing everyday things around the world like going to market. In the last few years, Papa and I would videocall every few weeks. Quick little check-ins, usually between five to twenty minutes. Sometimes he'd call back with a follow-up question or an additional piece of advice. Sometimes he'd be out at the public driving range, peering down the phone with a patch of sky above him, his head framed by palm trees. Usually he'd be in a moving car, in the back or passenger seat, either "on his way to dinner" or "seeing a friend." He was elusive in that benign way of his when I asked who was driving him, or if he was in a taxi. Sometime around COVID, randomly, he turned the camera onto someone else. “Maureen”, I’ll call her lol. His girlfriend of thirty years—obviously overlapping his affair with my mum. And his unhappy marriage with his wife, which he stayed in to the end of his days. From then on, Maureen and I started talking. She was kind, funny, perceptive. We quickly became friends.

In February 2023 after the borders had reopened, I went to Hong Kong, urged by Maureen. She said she wanted to meet me properly but also, he was 93, and she wanted to make sure I got to spend time with him. When I saw him at the arrivals gate, I realised Papa was truly elderly. He shuffled more than he walked, his speech and gestures were slower, more laboured. Even his eyes drooped like he all he really wanted was to sleep. That trip was everything. Maureen used her leave to hang out with us and drove us around Hong Kong in Papa’s car, nearly every day for two weeks. His playlists playing. Nat King Cole, Edith Piaf, Ella Fitzgerald, a bit of Joan Baez. We visited his faves spots and lookouts and scenic drives, local family restaurants, places he'd probably been going for years. Hong Kong's 'best of' by SC. On the way to the airport, he sang ‘When I Grow Too Old to Dream’ for us in the car, giggling at us all crying. Before leaving, I recorded a hasty glimpse of him waving goodbye.

Not long after we left, Papa got into a car accident while driving and injured his spine. It left him in pain, unable to walk. At first, he kept up a front of confidence but gradually his tone changed. He couldn't leave the house, and his phone was being monitored, restricting his contact with me and Maureen. I started hearing from him less and less. This February, I went back to a completely different Hong Kong. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to see him. After a while, I finally did. It would be my last time seeing him in person in this lifetime.

 Last Sunday, I went to Nan Tien Temple with Ollie to make a little prayer for Papa. I requested a candle to be lit in his name, and when I got there, one of the temple workers helped me organise daily prayers for him, to bless his journey.

 In the leadup to finding out the news, I'd been seeing birds birds birds. The day I found out, a raven flew up on the rooftop and looked right at me. Then at the temple, a sea hawk, so much like the black kites of Hong Kong.