Lives Remembered

Lily was certainly not perfect, and she would not have liked me to lie and make her out to be perfect either. And not everyone thought of her as a friend. Unlike our eldest sister JJ, who was an obedient and responsible child, Lily was somewhat the family rebel. She liked to have fun, and had many run-ins with our parents when it came to matters of chores and curfews. She also had a temper that JJ and I – for lack of a better description – simply feared!

Those of you who read my eulogy to JJ may recall that she and Lily spent some time away from the family when Lily was only 6 years old. The result of this was that Lily and JJ were always very close, but my relationship with Lily suffered for a majority of our childhood. I think Lily simply held a belief that I was the cause of them being sent away, so she branded me “mommy & daddy’s pet”, and it didn’t help that I got the toys and all the fun stuff where they got only clothing and school supplies – as kids, they didn’t know what the priorities of life were and that my parents were too poor to buy them everything they would have liked.

Tucked away in NASA’s online archives is a little known fact: On 19 March 1961, tiny particles of matter from another galaxy had hit the upper atmosphere of Earth over New Mexico, USA. Billions of radioactive particles that had resulted from the forceful splitting of these outer-space particles were showered across the area. Aside from this astronomical event, nothing of historical significance happened on this day. But an ocean away, in the town of Benoni, Transvaal, South Africa, a very special baby was being born. She was the second daughter of Victor and Fong Keen Look, both hailed from Guangzhou, China. They named their baby girl Lily (spelt with one “elle” on her birth certificate but, for some reason, with two “elles” in her passport and other official documents. She preferred “Lily”. ).

I like to imagine that some of those radioactive particles had floated across the Atlantic Ocean and somehow zapped their way into this newborn infant, because Lily certainly had an energy and zest for life that was simply “out of this world”, even up to her last days of cognizance!

On this exact day, 27 March 2008, that I begin to write this belated Eulogy, it was 50 years ago in 1958 that my sister Jannie (pronounced Jenny) was born, in the town of Benoni, Transvaal Province, Republic of South Africa — the first child and daughter of Victor and Fong Keen Look, both hailed from Guangzhou, China.

Like many Chinese immigrants to South Africa at that time, who had little education and limited knowledge of the English language, my parents were struggling to make ends meet in their land of adoption. My sisters and I were told many years later that our parents were so poor at the time, they had no money to buy the proper essentials for their first-born and there was no good heating in their small shop-house – as they tell it, Jannie had almost frozen to death in her early days of infancy…

This was perhaps a sign of what her life was to become, as JJ (our sibling nickname for her) would go through many trials and tribulations in her short lifespan. But the greatest legacy she leaves behind is how bravely she faced those adverse moments, and faced them mostly alone.

For those of you not familiar with the South Africa of the 1960s, it is sufficed to say that life for the Chinese under the Afrikaner government was not easy. The Chinese were not allowed to attend public schools, and Catholic convents were the only (and expensive) alternative for education. However, many Catholic schools would not accept students unless they converted to Catholism, and those convent schools that had no restrictions of such kind were few and far between.

Circa 1963: JJ is 5, Lily is 2.

For this reason, when was JJ was 9 years old, she and Lily (my second sister and 6-yrs-old at the time) were sent to live with another family in order to be able to attend Boksburg Convent, which was quite some distance away from where we lived. Because our parents had to single-handedly run their little fish & chips store from 6 am to 9 pm, six days a week, and our father further worked part-time delivering bakery goods in the wee hours of the morning, it was simply impossible for them to have to transport my sisters to/from school every day, not to mention that they had another screaming 3-year-old (me) to contend with!

I can imagine it was in those early years, during which they were constantly away from home, that JJ developed her matronly qualities. She found herself in the role of “mother”, caring for Lily and giving her the sense of family love that both, no doubt, sorely missed. [I recall they only came back home on weekends, if not bi-monthly.]

Our parents no longer remember the exact details of those early days now, but I know this arrangement only lasted about 2 years, perhaps less. It was emotionally hard on our parents as well — after all, it is rare that parents would happily send their children away, especially at such tender ages. Our parents decided to sell the Benoni store and we all moved to the township of Alexandria, where for a brief period our family was whole again.

However, JJ’s delight at being reunited with us did not last very long. Once again, our parents were faced with the dilemma of where to find a school that would accept noncatholic children. Lily, being the smartest of us 3 siblings, was accepted by the nearby Convent of the Holy Cross. JJ unfortunately was not as academically strong, and that same school would not admit her – that is how strictly controlled school admissions were in those days! Instead, JJ ended up in the far-off town of Nigel, where good friends of our parents’ had managed to convince the local convent school to take her in.

Again, logistics demanded that JJ live away from home, and she moved in with the same family who had gotten her into Nigel Convent; she was only about 11 at the time. But my parents did not want to inconvenience their friends for too long, and JJ was eventually enrolled as a boarding student at Nigel Convent. If you’ve ever seen those old British movies of dormitory schoolgirls being overseen by strict nuns in their black habits with long sticks in their hand, then you can imagine what JJ’s days at Nigel were like.

JJ is 6, Lily is 3, I am a few months old.

To this day, tears still swell in my eyes whenever I recall our monthly trips to Nigel to drop JJ off at boarding school. It was a traumatic event for all of us – in the first few trips, JJ would be screaming, not wanting to get out of the car, and she would beg our parents to take her back home. In later trips she would still weep, but silently to herself, and she would leave the car without being prompted to but remained standing on the grass lawn, waving and watching our car until it was out of sight. [In the years that followed, whenever I said goodbye to JJ, no matter the occasion, she would always stand there waving until I was out of sight. She did that on the very last day I saw her, waving from the window of her house as our car pulled away.]

I have to admit that I felt confused and angry at our parents at the time. We were all too young to understand why JJ had to live apart from us. But I am sure that such was the dynamics under which many poor, non-Catholic Chinese families lived in apartheid-era South Africa. Fortunately, several years later, the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the nearby suburb of Belgravia would come into our lives like a shining beacon to resolve this family dilemma, and that is where JJ, Lily, & I schooled together for the remainder of junior high.

JJ never matriculated from high school, because that would have meant attending the Holy Family Convent (in Park Town, where Lily & I completed high school). I think she was simply not accepted by the school because she had dropped back several grades at Belgravia. Instead, she attended Damlin College for a brief period, and eventually joined and graduated from secretarial school.

For those who had ever accused JJ of being “slow” or “stupid” because of her academic failures, they had obviously never seen her type and write in shorthand (the language of secretaries). She was SUPER-FAST!! For whatever reason she didn’t excel academically, she certainly proved she was as capable and self-sufficient as the rest of us! She became gainfully employed as a personal secretary, and was admired for her efficiency and professionalism at her job.

JJ eventually met and married her husband, Kin Ho-Yan, when in her early-20s. They lived with her parents-in-law and she quit her job to become a f/t homemaker. JJ & Kin adopted their only daughter, Carol (born 2 July 1993), when Carol was just a few days old. They remained married to the day JJ died (1 August 1997).

Christmas 1992 in SA: This would be the last time we were together again as a family.

The very last time I saw JJ was in February 1997, after she had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had visited her for about a week only, still believing at the time that her cancer was curable.

During that visit, I stayed with her overnight in the hospital while she was undergoing a painful procedure, for which she was given painkillers. That night, she proudly told me that she always only took half the painkillers that were given her, because she didn’t want to develop resistance to the drugs. Her exact words to me were, “May, we Look women are always strong. We can take our pain…” She was of course referring to Lily who had undergone a painful surgery for brain tumor just 3 years prior, as well as to the time when our mother lost her left hand in a painful accident, and yet bounded back in record time to face life bravely and independently as an amputee.

On July 30, 1997, I spoke for the last time with JJ on the phone – she was in hospital undergoing a radical procedure to try to clear her body of the cancer that had spread. She was in a lot of pain, and for the first time in a very long time, she allowed herself to cry openly to me, “May, I wish you were here. Just like when you stayed with me in hospital the last time.”

All I could do at the time was to try to encourage her… I admonished her to be stronger and reminded her we 3 siblings would be together again in December (as Lily & I had planned to go to SA together… at that point, we all STILL believed JJ would survive!). She immediately stopped crying and told me not to worry about her and that she would fight the pain and hang on until we were together again in December…

JJ died 2 days later from an infection — alone in the middle of the night… She was only 39 years old…

February 1997: JJ as I last saw her. I took this photo just before heading for the airport. Despite her cancer & personal pain, she still could muster a beautiful smile…

It is perhaps a result of those early, traumatic years of always been sent away that JJ had developed a sense of low self-esteem, something she was never able to throw off for her entire life. It made her shy and, perhaps because of that, she was uninteresting to most people, unlike our more boisterous sister Lily who never seemed to be alone. So although she was generally liked by everyone, JJ had few people she could call close personal friends. For such confidants, Lily and I were her only lifelines!

Some kids who feel rejected by their parents may rebel and go the bad extreme. But this is the beauty of who JJ was. She never hated our parents for sending her away. She never resented Lily & me for being the ones who got the best of what my parents could afford to give us at the time. Instead, her years of isolation only made her love us all the more, and she craved for that love to be returned. I regretfully confess that we did not always return JJ’s affections openly, and we took her love for granted far too many times.

For as long as I can remember, there is not one person I know who had ever met JJ and walked away disliking her. Her shyness and willingness to please others gave her a unique quality of open kindness and friendliness. JJ had no enemies that I know of. Lord knows, Lily and I accrued many “enemies” in our days, but JJ was the Angel among us. She was ridiculed at times for her overweight and “slowness”, but she adsorbed it all without resentment to her accusers.

To her own detriment, JJ kept her personal pains to herself and felt it her duty and destiny to always “go things alone”. In that sense, she had a quiet strength that no-one was really aware of. She saw herself as the older sister whose role was to nurture, not be nurtured in return. She never once tried to burden Lily & me with her problems.

I will never understand why JJ’s life had to be so difficult, and why at the time things seemed to be going so much better for her, that was when her life was unceremoniously snatched away.

Even in marriage, JJ’s life was not easy. After her kindly father-in-law passed away, she was left to face a critical mother-in-law, who admonished her for not bearing children and belittled her constantly in public for that… I write this not out of disrespect for Kin’s mother, but many who knew the elder matriach will agree that she was old-school, with outdated views of a woman’s role in marriage, and she acted out her beliefs on JJ – that must have been hell for someone who already suffered from low self-esteem.

JJ’s brightest moment was the day she was told to pick up a new-born baby girl who had been given up for adoption. Three years later, her emigration application to Canada was approved for herself and Kin. Finally, it seemed her life was turning out the way she had always dreamed it would – a loving husband and a doting baby daughter, and a chance to join Lily and my parents in Toronto. But it was not meant to be…

If life is a gift to everyone, and hers was only getting better, then why couldn’t she have been allowed to live to a ripe of age, watch Carol grow up, and have grandchildren of her own?

All around me, I see women who are materialistic, who marry only for money, who gossip and hurt others with their gossip, who look down on others for being less sophisticated than themselves… JJ was NONE of these!! What makes these other women more deserving of her? JJ may not have been a doctor or a professional or the life of every party, but she had strength of character and a moral conscience that outshined any of many people I know, and enough love & kindness to move the world!

Why her, I ask? This is one of those facts of life that will mystify me and frustrate me to the day I die…

For my part, JJ was the sister who never stopped loving her “baby sis”. My parents and even Lily have faulted me on many occasions, but JJ always only championed my cause. At the time she needed me the most, during her finals days, she still forgave me for not being at her side as I had promised I would be, and instead she listened to me regale my tales over the telephone of my super-career lifestyles and travels as a Senior Editor in Singapore and even encouraged me to achieve more. I can honestly say that there will never be another person who would love me more and so unconditionally as JJ did.

Today should have been the day we were celebrating JJ’s 50th birthday. Instead, my parents & I have spent a quiet day at her temple plaque, regretting what might have been.

I will forever miss JJ
and
I will forever regret that I never showed her or told her how much I loved her…
I urge those of you with parents & siblings to never to repeat my mistake