Fa Tsan Temple
Tai Shen looked for the sign of the Taxi Waiting Area and found the sign along with just a couple of yellow cabs waiting. Tai Shen walked up to the first cab whose driver was outside wiping the windshield and side windows with a damp towel and asked for the fare to take him to Taipei. "Where in Taipei?" the driver asked. Tai Shen paused for a while and said "Hsin Peitou". The driver quoted him a price. Tai Shen nodded in consent. The driver took over Tai Shen's suitcase and put it in the trunk while Tai Shen settled himself in the back seat. The cab took off onto the freeway which had started to get crowded. The cab driver murmured that he hoped he could beat the real rush that would begin in a short while and zigzagged his cab along to get ahead. Tai Shen took in the hues of dark greens along the freeway and let his mind wander.
He would pick up the two boxes he left with Hao, his college classmate and good friend, later. The two boxes of things he did not want to throw away but could not packed with him almost three years ago. He'd give Hao a call and Hao would be surprised. Hao knew Tai Shen was coming back but did not know the exact date and time. Tai Shen did not give him the information for fear Hao would make the arrangement not only to pick him up at the airport but insist that Tai Shen stay with him during his visit. Tai Shen did not want to inconvenient Hao as much as he wanted the time alone. He would also call his Little Uncle, the younger brother of his mom, whom he hadn't told of his visit at all. In fact he had only sent Little Uncle and his family one Christmas card during his three years' absence. But first he would go visit Mom and Dad as anybody would coming home after three years away from home. Would he go back to their old apartment? Tai Shen wondered to himself. He had sold the place three years ago to pay for the expenses needed for him to study abroad. The place he spent most of his first twenty five years of life in. As far as he remembered he lived in that place all his life. Mom had told him that they moved there when he was about three years old. Mom had showed him pictures of him playing in the yard of another place before they moved to that apartment on the east side of Taipei but he did not remembered the other place at all. He remembered the kindergarten and the elementary school he went to not far from their apartment. He remembered watching the airplanes descending into the Taipei airport from the patio of their apartment. He remembered the garden Dad maintained on the rooftop of their apartment. He remembered the add-on room on the rooftop where he spent his college days. He had wanted to live on-campus but mom did not want him to leave home and they comprised by giving him his own place on the rooftop. By that time Dad had abandoned the rooftop garden for the climb was too much for him to handle and Tai Shen had the rooftop all to himself.
Mom did not want him to leave home for a good reason. Dad's health had deteriorated dramatically ever since Tai Shen started college, old-age compounded with the chronically chain-smoke abused bad lungs. It's a good thing that he stayed so close to them. Every time Dad collapsed from out of breadth, mom would not have been able to carry Dad down the flights of stairs four-story high to hail a cab to the hospital. Dad had been in and out of hospital several times before Tai Shen graduated from college and had retired from his job as a newspaper editor, though he was still doing odd jobs proofreading books. Mom was the one that would go to the book editor to pick up and drop off the manuscripts and draft prints for Dad to spare Dad the climb up and down the stairs. Dad was pretty much confined to home at that time. After college, Tai Shen could have opted for delaying his draft, being the only son to old-aged retired parents, but Dad insisted that Tai Shen finish his draft and pursue his goal and Dad's dream of him studying abroad. So he did. One year into his service, Dad passed away. Mom told him Dad died peacefully in his sleep. When he visited the morgue the day of Dad's burial, Tai Shen saw the expression on Dad's face. It was hardly peaceful. Dad was gasping for air the very moment he died. Mom and he agreed to cremate Dad's body and kept Dad's ashes in Fa Tsan Temple.
Fa Tsan Temple located on the northern hillside of the Taipei basin. Grandma from Mom's side of the family, was the one that found the place and liked it so much that she bought herself a place in the ash tower of the temple for her postmortem resting place. Grandma died when Tai Shen was still in elementary school. When Grandpa died a couple of years later, Mom and Little Uncle bought him a place along side Grandma. Dad had no family on the island of Taiwan. He had talked about his family back in mainland but with very little enthusiasm. Dad's mother died right after gave birth to him. Dad was not close to his father who had other wives and children, none of whom was close to Dad either. Dad's father owned land but the Communists took that all away and when the Sino-Japanese war broke out, Dad left home joining the massive flow of people retreating with the Kuo Ming Tung Government, living a life on the road on the run for most of his young adulthood, and finally settled down on the island of Taiwan alone. Tai Shen did not think Dad would object to Fa Tsan Temple as his final resting place. Dad had been to the temple and had admired the view there.
The Taxi had now entered the metropolitan of Taipei. The volume of cars swarmed unto the freeway slowed down the traffic considerably. The Driver informed Tai Shen that he'd get off the freeway and find local shortcuts and so he did. The Taxi wormed through lanes of packed cars, vied off the highway to a local main road. Hsin Peitou is a mostly residential suburb to the north of Taipei, so now Tai Shen and his driver were traveling against the traffic. Cars and buses of people traveling to the city packed the other side of the road, but the taxi Tai Shen was riding in sped on north smoothly. Along the way, high-rises flanking the road sides gave way to smaller apartment buildings. While the taxi climbed a tall bridge over a river separating the north side of Taipei from the rest of the basin, you can actually see buildings sprawling miles out, apartments, factories, lots under construction and a few patches of vegetation. All used to be farmland. The road began to ascend and not long after they had reached the foothill of Hsin Peitou. Tai Shen gave the driver directions to climb a winding road up the hill. The road was pretty narrow for two way traffic but cars coming down the hill did not even slow down passing by. Tai Shen flinched every time a car was coming toward them but the on-coming car always missed them by inches. Apartments flanked even this roadway up the hill, but after a few turns, concrete gave way to tall grasses and trees. The road came to a fork and Tai Shen directed the driver to take the lower and right fork. Suddenly the space opened up on their right and a big gate appeared a few hundred feet ahead. A panel stretched across the gate on top read Fa Tsan Temple. Tai Shen asked the drive to go through the gate onto the driveway descending onto the parking lot twenty feet below. The car stopped and the driver came out to retreat Tai Shen's suitcase. Tai Shen paid the driver and the driver asked him whether he would want him to wait. Tai Shen said no and the driver drove away.
Tai Shen carried his suitcase and began to descend the stairway leading to the front side of the temple facing the open space to the south. From here one could see most of the west part of the Taipei Basin. The east part of the basin is blocked by Youngmingshen, a pretty exclusive and expensive hillside neighborhood. Tai Shen paused for a moment to take in the view before proceeding to the main hall to light incenses for the Buddhas. A nun was in a room with office desks to the side of the big hall. Tai Shen went in and asked her for permission to enter the ash tower. The nun led the way out the temple to a three-storied structure by the temple and opened a big iron gate. Light flood through the gate into a dark room revealing speckles of floating dusts and shelves of urns. Tai Shen nodded to the nun who uttered a chant and made a prayer sign with her hands before leaving Tai Shen alone. Tai Shen braced himself for the stifling odor in the air. It took a few seconds before his eyes could adjust to the dark room. The shelves were arranged in U shape. Each urn had a picture of the deceased facing out. Dried flowers and memorabilia were by some of the urns. Tai Shen found his way to his Dad's urn on the top shelf to the outer west side of the U. Tai Shen placed a ladder by the shelf and climbed to reach Dad's urn. He dusted around the marble urn to restore its green luster. Dad seemed to be looking at him in approval. The picture of Dad was taken after he had fallen ill to his lung disease. Sunken cheeks made Dad's expression especially sullen as if he was lamenting all his unfulfilled dreams and his loneliness. But he was not alone. To his side, Mom's picture was on a dark gray marble urn. Tai Shen dusted clean her urn too and whispered, "Mom, Dad, I'm back."
All those years in and out of the hospital, Dad's retirement money was drained empty. Fortunately the condolence money from friends and relatives covered his funeral expenses. Mom was left with only the apartment. Mom had already rented out Tai Shen's room on the rooftop to subsidize household expenses once Tai Shen left for Military service. That one year, after Dad was gone before Tai Shen was discharged from his service, took a real toll on Mom, her having to deal with the loss all alone. After Tai Shen finished his two year's service, he came home to find Mom aged a lot. She was not as sharp as she used to be. The apartment was not kept as clean as it used to be. She hardly went out and spent most of her time watching TV. Tai Shen started a job and dared not mentioning studying abroad to Mom not knowing where the needed money to pay for at least the first year's room and board and tuition would come from nor did he had the heart to leave her alone again so soon. But she was alone none the less. Tai Shen did not spend that much time at home. After work he would go out with friends instead of coming home to face Mom. From time to time she would complain that he hardly spent time at home. Then, he would invite friends home to hang out with him. There was not much conversation going on between mother and son. What's there to talk about?
It was a mild spring day. After work Tai Shen decided to come home to take mom out for dinner, no special occasion just a spur of the moment's decision. Mom was in the bathroom when Tai Shen came through the door. Tai Shen called her but there was no response. After a while, Tai Shen felt something was wrong because there was not a sound from the bathroom. He knocked on the bathroom door and opened it for a peek. Mom had fainted in the tub with blood gushing out of her mouth. He called for help and an ambulance came to rush mom to the hospital. Mom spent several weeks in intensive care recovering from a hemorrhage in the stomach. When she finally came out of intensive care, she was not well. She lost her speech. She seemed always in a trance. Tai Shen believed she could still recognize him as her eyes seemed to have sparkled when she saw him. She needed assistance to go to the bathroom. She needed someone to feed her though she barely ate. She needed full time help. Tai Shen hired her a health care aide. The cost of the aid took almost entirely what Tai Shen was making but what else could he have done? Mom's friends who had learned her illness came by to visit her. Some offered sympathy to Tai Shen, others their opinions. "Don't let them put her on dialysis when her kidneys fail. It's painful and it only prolongs her miserable life." "Make arrangement to transfer the apartment to your name or sell it now. Or else you will pay dearly for inherence tax." "Don't try to resuscitate her when she is gone. This is not living. This is suffering." Two months past, on a June day, five o'clock in the morning, daylight had just peeked through the horizon. The phone rang. It was the hospital, mom had passed away during the night. She had choked on her own mucus.
Closing the iron gate behind him, Tai Shen left Mom and Dad in their peace. Walking back to the main hall of the temple, Tai Shen again found the nun in the side office, thanked her and left some donation money with her. On the patio of the temple, Tai Shen stood, looking out onto the vast Taipei basin. Toward the east, blocking by the protruding Youngmingshen mountain, Tai Shen imagined the one spot that would be the apartment he once lived. Among the mass expanding metropolitan of Taipei, there is no longer a home for him. After Mom passed away, Tai Shen found that she had mortgaged out their apartment around the time of Dad's death for a portion of what the apartment was valued for. The mortgage payment was automatically taken out of her savings account which by now had had not much left. The sight of the apartment made Tai Shen sad, too much of Mom and Dad in it. It was the place in which Dad fell ill and passed away. It was the place in which Mom withered away. He thought about the mortgage payment and the hospital bill yet to be paid. He thought about his interrupted plan to study abroad. He made his decision. He gave the tenant on the rooftop his notice and put the house on the market for a bargain price. It was sold in no time. He grabbed the first school that accepted his application and left his first twenty five years of life behind. The following two years he lived single-mindedly, slept in the dormitory, followed lectures in classrooms, finished up assignments in laboratories, studied and shelved books in the library. He got his degree, he got an internship and he got a job. But at that very moment, on the patio of Fa Tsan Temple, all he had done did not make much sense because there was no one that really cared how he did or what he did. For all he knew he could have been a hobo and that made no difference to anyone. He felt like shredding the return ticket in his pocket to pieces just for the sake of it. He felt like plunging into the open space in front of him. He looked up the clouds that floated by and seemed to have seen Dad's face and heard Mom's voice. He realized he was actually living for all three of them. Tai Shen picked up his suitcase and pieces of imagery that came to his mind and walked on.