Geeky Chic

Most people my age attend a fair number of weddings, but I feel that I
have been on the funeral circuit instead.  Yesterday’s service was
strange, not in that I lost a relatively young relative (the “cool” cousin), not in that
his mother lost her only son, and not in the fact that it was conducted
in Japanese.  The oddest feeling that I have right now is that my
dearly departed cousin, as the only biological son of my grandmother’s
only brother, was the last Chung.  The Chungs came to America in
the 1800s, and now, they have completely died out.

The other thing that lingers is that his older, adopted brother did not
attend the service.  My grandmother’s brother made the odd move in
the 1950s of adopting a white baby* who was born prematurely (maybe this
was the only way that they gave white babies to Asian couples back
then).  So, this little white boy grew up with Chinese and
Japanese parents and learned how to speak the peasant dialect that my
family brought over with them.  When his father passed away, he
inherited my great-grandmother’s house and soon lost it by neglecting
to pay the property taxes on it.  Last we heard, he became a
meth-head and lost all of his teeth. (I can’t help but think that one’s
family has fully become Americanized once it obtains a meth-addict.)

*He adopted the baby with a different wife than the one mentioned in the first paragraph.

**
Otherwise, my body is still reacting to shock from the SF cold, after a day in the LA heat.