an angel for the family

The sky was grey with heavy clouds. The air was damp. Everything was wet from the rain that has just stopped. Little Jove waited with my mom and husband in the car, in the parking lot in the middle of the cemetery, while I followed the footsteps of my father and my three sisters walking in a single line on a little path between the tombstones.

From the little path between the tombstones, we stepped into a wider cemented path. Trees stood quietly at the sides of the path. Strange looking trees, their trunks were twisted and their branches were like clawing hands. Appropriate for a scary movie in a cemetery, I thought.

We walked on. Four grave diggers led the way. We asked them to find the grave as Papa has forgotten where it was. They walked quickly, their bare feet made no sound on the wet pavement. The air was cool, rain water still dripped from the leaves when the wind blew, everything was peaceful. I loved the serenity of the cemetery. The dead have no worries.

Not long after, they met another digger, an older one, who happened to know the location of the grave. He used to clean the three graves, he said. We steered out from the wide cemented path, climbing the hill filled with tombstones by carefully stepping on the wet slippery soil or the lower bases of big tombstones. On the way, he showed a big tombstone, a grave to a couple, the parents of my grandfather. I knew almost nothing about them; great grandpa died long before I was born and great grandma died when I was three, yet without them, there would be no me.

Almost at the top of the hill, the digger pointed down to a patch of land full of tall wild grass where scattered bouquets of flowers were thrown away by previous visitors of the nearby graves. I looked closely beneath the tall wet grass. Three small tombstones marked the three graves.

The left one was the newest one, the second daughter of my mother’s youngest sister, died at one day old in 1998. There was a cross made from cement on top of the tomb. The right one was the oldest, second daughter, third child of my mother’s elder sister, died at almost a month old in 1979. In the middle tomb lies my parents’ only son, my brother, died in August 1982, just two days after he was born.

The gravediggers quickly busied themselves clearing the grass on and around the tombs. We stood there, watching. Twenty over years have passed since the last time I visit the place, I was a four-year old child who knew nothing then.

Now I knew, inside the grave lies my baby brother, born and died in a much smaller size than my son when he was born. With him was a small statue of a dog that my father bought for him, he was born in the Chinese year of Dog, just like my son twenty four years later. I could not imagine how my parents must have felt when they buried their son, much as I could not imagine how I would feel if I lost my son. Sadness still clouded their faces if I asked or mentioned about my baby brother.

I have a lot of questions I did not dare to ask. Maybe they did not know the answers themselves if I did ask. Silly questions like: how would our family be now if my baby brother was alive? Would I still have three sisters, the same ones like I have now? Would he be my closest friend and companion? Would his opinion and advice matter when I chose my husband? Would he study with me in Singapore? Would he be a great uncle for my son? And so on.

I knew for sure that our lives would not be the same with him around and it was utterly useless to even ask those questions. Maybe in their hearts my parents asked the same questions from time to time. Or maybe it was only one question, why did he have to die?

While standing over the three little graves, I thought that my little baby brother was now an angel, residing in heaven with his Father and his cousins, looking after us, waiting for us. All of us will see him one day, smiling broadly while introducing us to the hands of our Maker.

When the grave diggers finished clearing the graves, we took photos with brother Wei Xiong’s tombstone, said our prayers, and then walked back to the car, back to the noisy land of the living, back to our busy lives.