The tale of that, prodigal, son of the family…translated…
Nobody thought that you're, any good to anybody else, you don't have properties, no savings, no marriage, no children, but I know well, that in the final decade of your mother's, life, you are, way more useful than I, and our two other, siblings.
Because you didn't have work, you'd helped sell the snacks for mother, on the days when everybody was off on holidays, especially the Chinese New Year's, you'd passed those days of busyness with mother. On the major cold front of 2016, you'd helped made sure that the packaged orders that mother worried about was shipped on time. During the two and a half years our mother was with cancer, your days began with fixing her breakfast; before you'd begun working, you would purchase the fresh fish for mother for her lunch, you also took mother to the oncologists for every treatment session, took her to the ferry to the Gushan, put her on that cab, and allowed me, who's still working, to have enough time to file for absence at the office to pick her up at Kaohsiung Medical Center, to take her to treatment, for her chemo sessions. On the way back, you would still be there, waiting for mother at Gushan, to take her home.
he'd gone all in in his, life...photo from online
Nobody thought that you're, any, good, but, all these are the things that only you can do, for mother.
You'd been a gambling man since your twenties, for the thirty whole years, gambling became, that malignant tumor you can't, get, rid of, and it would come back every once in a while.
Mother had left for a little over a year now, you'd sold the stands, to pay off your debts. I'd demanded that you split up the money you got from selling mother's stand to the rest of your siblings. Although, you have the rights to the stands of our mother's; you'd done as I'd asked, I'd, blocked off the possibilities of our mother's hard work for her whole life, ended up, lost to the gambling rings.
But this time, I couldn't, block it off again, you'd, lost all that mother left for you, and, the day following the Dragon Boat Festival, from a hard working, responsible security guard for the last three years, you'd, gone missing, stopped working, and, we never heard from you, again.
A week later, I'd returned to our home, the door was locked, no scooter parked outside, no shoes, nobody inside the home, the calendar pages stayed on June 11th.
I'd offered incense to the ancestors, used the plates, kneeled before the plaques, told them: I did my best, should I just, let go now? The ancestors responded back: yes!
Our parents' home, which once was yours too, in 2016, dad passed, in 2019, mom, and now, you're, also, gone. These two and a half years, I'd always, shared with you my homecooked meals, paying you back, for taking care of, our, mother, and encouraged you to find a steady job, we seemed close as brother and sister, and yet, don't know when, your world started, straying from mine. Or maybe, we were, never, walking that, same, path………………
The story of the prodigal son here. The brother got caught in gambling, and, lost everything, and had a short time of setting his own life straight, but in the end, he still, couldn't, defy fate, and now, the writer still goes back to her parents', to offer the respects, to her parents who'd died, also, her brother who's, no more too…
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