THOMAS L. CHIU
HE CALLED HER
THE JEWELS
He saw her as the spokesperson very early in their liaison.
She was entrenched in the new world of justice. Thus it was not surprising
to see her enlisting as a street radical, exposing the evils of her government.
This was China in the late twenties and thirties. There were cries for changes.
These rumblings began to take hold in major cities. Soon the tiny villages
would erupt, too.
He took her as his wife amidst this setting. He was the contemplative one;
careful, diligent, a passive thinker who brewed with profound Confucianism
as well as an acute sense of Western Liberalism. He was a physician.
She was much younger, at times impulsive, reacting swiftly at moments when
he was rather reticent. Soon their lives were complicated by the need to
leave the country. Her realization and dream for a free China were gone.
He could not practice with conscience in a country imbued with inequalities.
The war came and went. She had gone, but not after giving him ten children.
He was all alone now, a few feet from the halls of death.
He spoke of the many wonderful times in his youth, his love for mother,
their struggles to make life meaningful and truthful to their own convictions.
He spoke of the hardships during the wars among countries and wars among
his peers, in which he always seemed to be the vanquished.
He spoke of the joy of raising us all, each one with different colors and
faces. He loved Schumann's Traumerei very much.
"Play that again," he used to ask.
He died peacefully. He left us only jewels, his memories.
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