My Parents - Part 5: A Tragic Split

 In the words of my uncle:

Once in Hong Kong, my father married another woman. He was 55. The woman, a widow, was in her 20's.

That shocked the whole family.

My father calculated that
(1) The family trapped under Communists could be for another five to ten years. By then he would be over 60 and his life would be over.
(2) My mother was old, old-fashioned, stubborn and unchangeable anyway.
(3) My wife and I, being modern, educated and open-minded, would understand and accept his desire to start a new family, a new life, no longer a bachelor's life.

If those were in his mind, he was wrong. All three of us independently voiced strong objection for what he did. He insisted to have his way, and threatened to cut off relationship with all of us if we objected. My mother took Albert to Hong Kong to confront with my father. My father begged my mother to accept his new wife as concubine who would be willing to be my mother's faithful servant. My mother refused.


The tragic split of the family became final.

My wife and I took over the family responsibility and sent money through Hong Kong to support the family in Guangzhou. Then step by step, we got all of them out of Guangzhou to Hong Kong, and from Hong Kong to America. By 1966, my sister, my brother and his whole family and finally my mother were all here in Baltimore.

My father did not reestablish relationship with the rest of the family until Feb. 25, 1968, when Linda was hit by a car and he later came to Baltimore to see Linda. He expressed regrets for what he did. He was happy to see all of us here in America, and each of us had remarkable achievements. To his new family in New York, it remains incommunicado according to his wishes and his will, until and except at his own funeral. He was buried in Brooklyn, NY at the cemetery near Bushwick Ave. and Conway Street. My brother, sister and I with our spouses attended his funeral and burial, together with his new family (one wife, one step daughter, and three daughters). We met many relatives there whom we hadn't seen for over forty years. My father died of atherosclerotic heart disease with arrhythmia and congestive failure, complicated with gastric bleeding, hypovolemia, kidney shutdown and uremia. Gastric bleeding was most likely due to ingesting of anti-arthritic drugs, unlikely due to terminal stress ulcer. He never had chronic ulcer symptom in his life, although still possible. I, then Donald, treated him while in Baltimore.

My comments:

At the age of 15 or 16 I remember an older man coming to visit us at our home in Silver Spring, MD. My parents told us to meet our grandfather. We didn't even know we had a grandfather (my father's father had passed away even before I was born). Until that day, nothing was spoken about him. So that was strange to find out all of the sudden that we actually had a grandfather that was alive and living his life with another family.

Later, while living in New York, I would actually run into my grandfather occasionally at wedding banquets in Chinatown. I was pleased to learn that he spoke some English (unlike my grandmother who never learned any for all the years she lived here). When he died, I joined my mother and father in attending his funeral services. I arrived straight from my job in midtown Manhattan, and my father grabbed me and told me to just follow his lead through the foreign (to me) Chinese traditions and procedures throughout the funeral. Although my grandfather had another family, my mother and her brothers still maintained the "first" position in the rank order at the funeral proceedings.