Rest in Peace to my Dad (12/7)

After almost 5 months in the hospital, my Dad finally succumbed to his illness.  My sister and I had been going back and forth to Malaysia for the past 4 months.  We didn't think our 4th and final trip to see our Dad would come so soon.  He had just been okay-ed to be discharged from the hospital the Tuesday of that week, Dec 5th.  And by Thursday early morning Dec 7th, he had passed away :-(

I'm so glad Graham and Charlie were able to see him and spend time with him prior to his illness.  This was one of our earlier visits when the boys were younger:

Graham and Charlie never did get to meet my late mom.  Here's a photo of both mom and dad during my sister's wedding in 2005:

I'm glad Graham and Charlie were able to visit grandpa or "Lao Ye" during our most recent visit to Malaysia this past summer.  It's too bad it had come to this but Dad went through so much during those 5 months in the hospital.  Anytime he would overcome something, another thing would come up!

There were lots of flowers brought up to the funeral parlor for Dad:

Here's the program for the parlor.  By the time my sister and I found out about my dad's passing, we booked our tickets and arrived by Sunday afternoon:

I'm so glad Dad's caretaker Chelyn was also able to come by and pay her respects.  She's pretty much like family now - after spending over 3 months with Dad 24/7:

Dad's obituary in the newspapers:

And Chinese papers too:

And I didn't even know that we had an uncle that passed away when he was only 5 years old!  We only realized that when I saw the obituary - where it listed all of dad's siblings:

Dad remarried about 7 years ago to a lovely lady from China.  We are so thankful for all of her love and time for my dad and also to all my aunts and uncle for taking care of him while my sister and I were in the US.

Dad was baptized during his time at the hospital, so like my mom - Dad also had a church mass:

We (my sister and I and also my brother) as well as some of my cousins, actually had to stay awake the entire night at the funeral parlor prior to the trip to church. My brother and a younger cousin left around 2:30am to the cemetery to "break ground" at the grave site.  There's so many odd traditions!  And oh, my sister and I were told off several times by our aunts to not laugh so loudly at the funeral parlor.  Oops! Ha!

RIP Dad - Glad he has been reunited with mom and that he is no longer suffering/in pain: