Well, Nacho4Sara had some bad news last week, this week it’s my turn. My mother just called me and told me he went into the hospital with an infection, they put in a catheter and he went into cardiac arrest. I feel completely and totally numb. Some little voice inside keeps asking, “Why?” and another answers, “It was his time.” I keep bursting into tears, but they only last a few seconds.
Yuan Tai escaped communist China when he was 10 years old with his parents. They moved to New York, and his father amassed quite a lot of money in the Chinese antique trade. His father turned some of this money into a foundation for Chinese medical students, which is how I am going to college, though I am not Chinese nor a medical student. Yuan bought me this computer. He paid my rent. He and my godmother never had any kids, my sisters and I were like theirs. My mother set he and his wife, who was my mom’s college roommate, up together 30 years ago.
I can’t sleep, and I can’t sit still. So I am posting this. You have no idea how greatful I am for the last Dopefest. If it had been called off, or had not taken off the way it had, I might have posponed my trip due to my illness that week. If I had done that, I would not have seen Yuan. And if that had happened, I would never have forgiven myself. As it is, I feel like a beast because my youngest sister, who hadn’t seen Yuan in years, begged to come. Andygirl and Soulsling got to meet him, just for a second, and you guys were the only friends I have as an adult who ever got to meet him. There had always been trips with friends who ended up bailing. I think that hurts the most, that no one I love outside my family ever got to experiance what a wise, funny, smart man he was. You all would love him, he was the king of intellectual conversation. He would sometimes take an opposite position than the one you had, and argue it passionately, not because he believed it, but because it was good for the conversation. He called this being “the contrary.” Last fall, he took me on a walking tour of Chinatown and Little Italy, where he gave me his “goomba impression.” You haven’t lived until a six foot Chinese man has treated you to a mafisto impression while sipping a cappaccino in Little Italy. That day we had a debate on technology. He argued that his ancestors were a whole lot happier being farmers in China and not giving a shit about money or career. I argued that without technology, he would never had come to New York, and I would never have met him, and we never would have had that conversation. I think that’s the one argument I ever won.
I love my parents so much, but in a way, that’s because I have to. And they have to love me. It’s genetics. But Yuan chose to love me because he had, in his words, known me since I was inside my mom’s belly. Since before I was me. And for some reason, he continued to love us, and take care of us. My parents are hippies, they have never had any money. He didn’t blink an eye at paying my rent so I could go to school. He just did it, because he loved me, and you take care of people you love.
Here is an email he sent me back in August. I printed it out and put it on my bulletin board in my living room next to a picture of him to remind me why I am working so hard. I think it sums him up pretty well. It’s verbadim, all grammatical errors are a combination of him being Chinese, and him simply not caring about a little thing like grammer.
“Dear bubbling Brooke of the Yada Yada fame,
Its great to hear you’re excited about school, remember, don’t cram everything in at once, in fact, I believe I’ve learned most of what I know after school – things like what is behind a wall, what it is like living with a lady Jane [my godmother], or what the IRS is about, or that there are people in the Steppes like Tajiks or Uzbeks, or the Mexico has and had a great civilization, its city Tenochitilan was the biggest in the world, or that their calculation of Venus was very accurate until the last century, or the best astronomical observeratory was in Tashkent until the last century, but these are just facts, there is a lot more. So just flow mit dem Tao, and don’t bother yourself too too much TOO [I referred to myself in email as TOO: The Other One. My elder sister was The First One, and my little sister was The Little One. Yuan was The One and Only Yuan,]
Here endith old people talk, go back to youth and excitement, and the need to swallow the whole works, just take whiskey or Pepto, here she comes, eehaa
TOOY”
I might not be posting much, or checking my email to often. We don’t know when any of the services will be, I’m finding out tomorrow. Probably later this week. Anyway, Wonko, thank you for planning that Dopefest, I am eternally greatful. Andy and Soul, I hope you were able to see in the 5 minutes you knew him what a truely astounding human being he was.
I’m flowing mit dem Tao, Yuan-O. I just wish I had you as a guide.
that you realize what a wonderful thing you had in this man…