At the Memorial Garden

“Garden of Reconciliation”, Sonia Leung

Father, my dear familiar stranger, I wish I could know you better.
I wish we could have at least one father-and-daughter conversation.
The yearning dries my lips with such an unquenchable thirst.
Standing before the spot where your ashes fell,
I feel the effect of time carrying muddy water,
scouring the ground bare.
But I am here, noticing a purple flower
like a small piece of a blood clot.
Petrified, I touch it with my trembling hand.
It says: Pick me (or is it ‘Forgive me.’)

I wrote the above after the Qingming Festival (Tomb-sweeping Day) in April 2024. My first visit to the memorial garden, where my father rests for eternity, was in 2022 with my mother, when I returned from yet another exploration of my life. This year’s visit was the first time with the whole family, except my elder sister. As she was still estranged, she avoided all our gatherings.

My father, Leung Wailai（梁維禮）– ‘Wai’ meaning maintain or uphold, and ‘Lai’ meaning manner – passed away from lung cancer at the age of sixty-four in Hong Kong’s Shatin Hospital on 6 August 2011. The Births and Deaths Registry listed his occupation as a building caretaker. Like his other jobs, he took on this role with dedication, often working long hours to provide for our family.

He guarded a large parking building in Kwun Tong’s industrial area. During the Chinese New Year, from the first to the fifteenth day, when drivers passed the guardroom, many handed the guards red packets of money through the window. The red envelope usually contained a HKD twenty note, with more generous ones offering fifty.

On the sixteenth evening of the lunar new year, my father would unload all the packets onto the bed he shared with my mother. The two of them sat up in bed, facing each other, with the pile of envelopes between them. ‘One for you, one for me,’ Father said, and started distributing the packets without separating the fifties from the twenties.

‘One for you,’ Father said with a wide grin, a rare moment of self-satisfaction, and continued, ‘One for me, one for you….’ His grin widened as he went on.

Mother sat opposite him with an equally big smile, a rare moment of affection toward my father.

This could go on for thirty minutes. In the end, each got a bit over one thousand five hundred. The years Father was the building caretaker were among the happiest moments between my parents that my mother could recall.

However, for the rest of the year, my father felt this security guard post was even more demeaning than his factory job. He had worked in a Japanese electronic appliance factory from early 1985, soon after he arrived in Hong Kong from mainland China. He became a line supervisor a few years later, and earned a certain level of respect, but nowhere near the status he’d had as a doctor in China. Still, it was a significant improvement from being just another line worker – like an ant, indistinguishable from any other.

The promotion enhanced his self-esteem and gave him a sense of belonging. Gradually, he felt at home in that factory, and was prepared to work there until retirement. Unfortunately, the factory moved to Shengzhen to cut costs, as many manufacturers did in the 90s. Father lost his place in the world again.

He tried various jobs after that, but each lasted only a short time. Finally, he settled on the security guard post that my fourth uncle (the only uncle in Hong Kong) introduced. Besides having to work a longer shift (twelve hours, versus nine before) and endure a more physically demanding role (he needed to make rounds to check the carpark’s thirteen floors by walking up and down the steps at least twice a day), he had to carry a sprayer, spraying pesticide on the pots and plants all over the parking building on the periphery of each floor. This last task cut him deep. It made him feel like a mainland China farmer.

Father did not look down on the farmers. What hurt him was the shocking reminder of how far he had departed from his former self. The sense of self-doubt gnawed at him. He did what he knew: retreating into himself, smoking, drinking, betting on horse races, anything that helped him to alleviate the pain of reality.

Despite his imperfections, Father’s love for Mother was unwavering. Though not always the most considerate, his actions were a testament to the depth of his emotions and his commitment to our family.

When he was diagnosed with lung cancer, it was already at Stage Four – the last stage. He suffered for six months before dying. The diagnosis dealt a devastating blow to our family. It changed the dynamics of our relationships, forcing us to confront the mortality of our flawed, beloved father. His suffering provided a constant reminder of the fragility of life and the inevitability of loss.

The last time I saw him was the day before I went overseas. If there was one thing about me that he was most proud of, it had to be my extensive traveling experience. He wished he could travel worldwide, leaving his sorrowful self behind.

Or maybe that was my reason. We were loners who felt freer on the road alone.

‘Our Ling-er 玲兒 (the endearing name in Hokkien my family called me in front of others) has no sense of direction,’ Father bragged during the Leung clan’s gatherings, ‘and yet, she has become a globe-trotter – going to places I didn’t know existed before!’ The glow of pride on his face made me want to cry.

His pride in my travels was a stark contrast to his previous disapproval. It was as if my ability to navigate the world was a redemption of his own unfulfilled dreams. And it stopped me from telling him, ‘Father, I got lost a lot.’

There have been countless moments in my life when I have longed for your guidance, Father. Your wisdom, advice, and presence were always needed, but you were not there. This absence is a void that I will always carry with me, a constant reminder of the loss I have experienced. Your absence is a presence in itself, a silent echo of the love and guidance I still seek from you.

Did you remember how you returned to your hometown, Nanan, knelt in front of the ancestor’s tombstones, and cried about how shameful you felt of having a daughter like me, who ran away from home at the age of fifteen? The scene of you crying, collapsing on the ground while Mother and the uncles standing behind you, kept breaking into my dreams, making my one semester in the US feel like hell. I felt that I needed to prove to you that I was not your disgraceful daughter.

I ran away for a reason: I chose to live.

I would have told you, if you had ever asked me or given me a chance to talk with you. If we had that one proper conversation that I yearned for.

You called me a whore the night before I departed for the United States. You thought I stole family money to cover my debts, instead of borrowing it for my overseas study trip. ‘Study?’ you yelled, and laughed the ear-piercing laugh you had when you drank. I wanted to jump from the top floor, to drown out your yelling and laughing.

I put a terrible pressure on myself, both to prove my worthiness to you and to prove it to myself after the rape that I endured when I was fourteen. You never knew about it, but it reached a boiling point while I was abroad. And when I got a B+ instead of the usual A, I had a breakdown. But because of the breakdown, I met an experienced psychologist who helped me to embark on the journey of self-reconstruction.

When I returned to Hong Kong, I felt capable. I accepted a brand-new, challenging job. My performance earned me a good position, great pay, and excellent travel opportunities. That must have been the shifting point, when you started to see my travel as a source of pride.

I am happy you were proud of my travels. But how much more gratifying it would be, if you could only comprehend that I am your same ‘Ling-er’. Without the fifteen-year-old Ling-er, who dared to leave home to explore new possibilities to live on, there would be no successful business executive travelling the world.

Father, I wish you could have seen me for who I was, not what I had become. If we had talked, you would have discovered we had much in common. Like you, I have always been a book lover. I am prone to dramatic mood swings. These are but two character traits I inherited from you.

I wish I could have been braver, and tried harder to break the wall between us.

As I turned to leave your hospital bed, you raised your thumb, indicating me, and then your little finger, indicating yourself. I froze for a moment and then fought back my tears. No, Father, that was not reconciliation. It pained me to see how little you thought of yourself. But it was too heavy a subject to talk about then.

You lost your head of wild hair after the initial attempts at chemotherapy, and your body was reduced to bones. I never thought words like ‘small’ and ‘frail’ could apply to you.

You raised your hand again, giving me all you could, a weak wave, waving me off, releasing me, so that I could continue my journey and conquer the world.

Goodbye, Father. I had much more to say to you. But ultimately, I accepted both of us for who we were. There is nothing to forgive. This acceptance brings me the peace I have longed for. I wish you had felt the same.

Father, I would not thank you for my life. I do not know if I would have chosen to come to this world if I’d had a choice.

But thank you for the little light bulb you installed above my bed when I was about five years old, hoping to help me combat the fear of darkness. It worked wonders, reminding me of your love, no matter how distant and feeble.

Thank you so much for making trips to the police station, to ask for any news of me after I ran away from home. It must have cost you so much pride, and I am so sorry to have put you through it, Father.

Thank you very much for the photograph of me by the waterfall, which became the cover art for my book. I never knew the photo existed, and only found it after I signed the book contract. I take it as your approval and blessing.

Finally, it felt as if you accepted me for who I am, approved of my journey to get here, and of my writing about our perilous past. Like the stars in the night sky that I see during my long walks, you sent me your love and blessings from afar.

Father, you have lived and made your mark. You supported our family financially by enduring almost three decades of demeaning jobs in Hong Kong. Both you and Mother might have doubted your choice to come here. You may have had your dreams and disappointments. But both of you held our family together and let us, your four children, have a better future. Deep down, we all appreciate both of you dearly.

Father, my dear familiar stranger, we are good.
I did love you and will always do so.
May you rest in peace, my beloved father,
the one and only – 梁維禮。

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Sonia Leung is a Hong Kong-based poet and author of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her awards include Hong Kong's Top Story 2015 and 2016 and Wordview 2013, a UK-based annual global poetry competition. Sonia is the author of Don't Cry, Phoenix (2020), an English and Chinese poetry collection with a CD of ten original songs, and the critically acclaimed autobiography The Girl Who Dreamed: A Hong Kong Memoir of Triumph Against the Odds (2024). The Chinese version of this memoir, 《追夢的少女》will be published in March 2025.