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i often wonder how early memories work and what is truly remembered versus what is "remembered" after stories are told and repeatedly retold.
My memories of my paternal grand parents are vague, but the feelings i have for them are warm and unchanging. After all, their faces, oddly picked out in different sized pearls on a red velvet background, has greeted me in my parent's home ever since i was very young. The earliest memories i have of my paternal grand parents were somber ones. My grand mother passed when i was quite young (so young i can't accurately remember or trust the memories there of) and my grand father passed when i was around four. All the memories associated with them were of dark rooms, incense, and somber serious adults. What i know of them are mostly passed down to me verbally through various stories told and retold.
What i know is that they raised five children, the oldest being a girl, followed by four boys, my father being the third of the children, the second of the boys. My grand father was a general practice doctor in the village near Tainan, Taiwan. My grand mother helped out in the clinic and chased after the kids. Though never wealthy, since they were often not paid in currency but in goods or a simple smile, they were respected in the community and always made sure that, in the afternoon, the chimney in the kitchen exhausted cooking smoke - regardless of whether or not any actually cookery was going on. It was told to us that the reason why this show of cooking was done was to assure those who couldn't afford medical service that Dr. Liang was comfortable and at ease even if he isn't always paid. It was told to us that many a meals in the Liang household consisted of a bit of veg, lots of rice, and a lot of soy sauce to make the rice go down easy.
All of my uncles and my father attended Taipei Medical School, then the second best possible medical institution in Taiwan (the best being the National University). My uncles were all surgeons, my father studied Pharmaceutical Sciences and became the Pharmacist in Chung-jen Orthopedics Hospital in Kaoshiung, Taiwan, a hospital founded and established by my grand father when he relocated the family from the village in Tainan to then (and still) second largest city in Taiwan. Once the practice at Chung-jen stabilized and thrived, and all my uncles, my father, and my aunt (she married a surgeon who is also on staff at Chung-jen) were comfortable and starting families (my aunt had two boys and two girls, my eldest uncle a boy and a girl, and my dad got married in an arranged marriage to my mom and had just had me), my grand parents went on a trip to see the world -- the dream they both had, which said something about the type of persons they were. Somewhere in Europe, my grand mother fell ill. Though my grand father was unwilling to leave his sick wife, he continued travelling on her insistence and urging while she traveled back to Taiwan and the care of her children.
Her condition never improved though she was installed in the best hospital of Taiwan at the time, at the National Taiwan University Medical School. Her children took turns traveling from Kaushiung to Taipei (4 hour journey by car in the modern condition, a 5-6 hour train ride back in the days) to look after her and take care of her on a weekly rotation. My grand mother faded into a coma as my grand father's journey brought him closer to home. As family tradition would have it, she came out of her coma when at last my grand father arrived to her bedside. She was able to see him and exchange brief greetings before she finally succumbed to her illness and died.
To this day, i still never got a straight answer as to what she died of.