Happy Father's Day.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  This is the first one our family will be having without you.

It’s funny how “firsts” usually are yoked to happy occasions…first look, first kiss, first dance, first birthday, first wedding anniversary.  But this first…

The calendar pages have been flipped 8 times since the day you died, the last one marking a time when my moments in silence could finally change from mourning to celebrating your life.  From sunrise to sunset, yours was a life that shone as radiantly as a soul should. 

In the Taiwanese language, say it out loud and you’ll find that “love” and “pain” are basically the same word.  Growing up as the child of immigrants, feeling the push and pull of cultures and generations, I always felt that the "pain" in "love" was mine to bear.  Only now, 8 flips of the calendar too late, do I realize that it was yours all along.

You didn’t fly out of Taiwan—holding your hopes together with $40 and lingering whispers from a wife you temporarily had to leave behind—for yourself.  You did it for your future children and grandchildren. 

When I was a little child, all those nights you spent going to the hospital and buying your clothes at discount stores…you didn’t do that for yourself.  You did it so that you would never have to look your wife and children in the eye and deny them something that they needed.

“If I don’t do it, no one else will take care of them.”  Even though your body was wracked by chemotherapy and cancer alike, that’s what you’d tell me when I asked you to stop driving 2 hours a day to see your patients in the poorer areas of Oahu, knowing that once you got out of the car each step...each step would eat away at your life and let you know that it was doing so.

“Is that okay?”  Even though you never had to and it’s what I had been telling you for so long, you still asked me for permission to stop chemotherapy and to stop working.  You wanted so badly to pass on your practice to me, to make sure I’d be set for the rest of my life.  You didn’t care at what cost to you.

When you can give of yourself to someone or something without hesitation and without regret, even when it hurts you, even when it strikes at your soul, even when it causes you pain…that is what love truly is.  That is why in Taiwanese they are the same word.

You didn’t pass on your practice to me, Dad.  But you passed on to me something far more valuable…the true meaning of love.  And for that I am eternally grateful. 

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  You deserve it.  I am proud to carry your last name and I promise to love my family with the same strength that you did.

This is one of my fave family pics...  Yes, that's me in the chawan haircut.

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Another subscriber tattoo!

Yeah, I have ugly feet...so what?! That's why I needed her name to make it better looking. (She requested pink, btw.) Edit: I don't have marfan's.  I had to elongate the pic so the letters would come out better!

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Check it out!

The chapter I co-wrote for a textbook is finally out in print!!!   Sorry, I'm 3% paranoid, so I blurred out the title of the book and the co-author in case any of you out there are psycho! haha... It's a great textbook for med students/residents, so any of you Grasshoppers out there can email or IM me and I'll tell you the title.  Now all my neighboring emos on featured content can take this book and...well, read it.  Maybe they'll learn something instead of spending all their time lamenting life! haha!

Have a great week! Eat your vegetables!

Only 17 days left of residency!!!!  Woot!