Main Image

Tributes

Bryan Wong - Son

Without question, this past year has been the most difficult time of my entire life. If I could describe the experience in one word, it would be "paradox". His time here was all too brief. Yet the travails that he endured felt mercilessly drawn out.

My father was a man of few words, and he didn't speak of his illness in detail. But his actions, the things our family could see every day, only spoke of courage.

Dad endured the hospital visits and treatments, and never stopped seeking answers and solutions. Maybe it was the engineer in him, but he sought more information about himself, even if I was too scared to hear it myself.

My father also didn't allow his illness to cause him to shy away from welcoming those he loved to the house. He wanted you to come in, sit down, eat and talk and laugh. And he'd do his best to join you. Those of you sitting here today provided the joy that was ultimately my father's best medicine, and your support is deeply appreciated, not only by us, but Dad himself.

My father fought, and we fought alongside him. Mom was practically his 24/7 nurse and greatest advocate, and his sons and daughters and grandkids lent support when we could. We tried our best because we knew Dad did.

So the real paradox of this ordeal is that, as nature gradually took the energy and capability from his body, in my eyes, Dad only became stronger and stronger.

In fact, my father's life was in many ways about reconciling paradoxes. Dad was full of intellect and capable of complex thought, but he was content with a life of simple gifts and pleasures. He worked for the armed forces most of his life, even though he was ultimately a believer in peace. He was able to pass on timeless family traditions that represented his core values, all the while acknowledging and embracing the changing world he and his family lived in.

And at the end of his rich and fruitful life, he did what any loving father would do -- leave a blueprint of the kind of person I want and should be to myself, to my friends, to my family. This is best explained in a memory:

It was about seven o'clock in the evening, when our van rushed down Highway 805 to the Kaiser hospital in San Diego. There was a feeling of concern and urgency in the air. Dad and I were the in the van. In the back, there had been a bed set out for the impending patient, and I was the one laying on it.

I was about 8 years old and had a fever. When we got there, the doctor pressed a popsicle stick on my tongue, and after a visit to the pharmacy, Dad was on the road returning home, and I was curled up on the bed in the back, encompassed by the comfort of knowing that I was being taken care of.

I was reminded by this some 24 years later, when it was my turn at the steering wheel, heading down that same exact route. For me though, in the end, Dad will always be the one driving the van.