I love you. My one and only family.

My One & Only Life.
Covid19 Lockdown D27

Today is my birthday. As a gift to myself I am relaunching my blog and formally launching my foray into writing my Memoirs, much like Marcus Aurelius when he penned his thoughts and feelings of his life and as Emperor of Rome (161-180 BCE) which was published as The Meditations after his death. My blog is now renamed I love you. Live. 

I shall continue to document moments in my life that are significantly memorable about the people I meet, places I've been and things I've done. What better way to restart than with my family. 

My recently separated wife of thirty plus years is everything I wanted in a woman to bear my children. Strong, disciplined, talented and resourceful, the type that gets things done. Super quick.

Mission accomplished.Three wonderful children in a span of five years.

We were happy productive parents. She even a greater mother, teacher, housekeeper, friend, gourmet chef and protector of her children. Look at them now.

Neither one of us knew how to go on in our relationship having accomplished a beautiful family, our children now live separate from us pursuing their careers. Leaving us an empty nest to face each other once again. 

We then realised we hardly knew each other as individuals. I still wonder why she married me.

We tried to be decent to each other. She was patient, faithful and silent, seething an anger within. I was serenely content but seeking intensely, silently searching for life's answers. 

I asked for a reset for us to start anew. Neither of us knew how. 

So we split. It was my fault. I strayed. I was lost and lonely. I was searching for meaning. 

I found a guru. Several gurus in a spiritual sense and I made a pilgrimage. They say that in India, when a man goes on his pilgrimage, it's a journey of no return. 

In India back in the days everyone walked so it'll take forever to walk back. It's been over a year now on the journey into my pilgrimage. I aim to make it back.

I now know what it's like to be free, conscious and alive.

I would not trade this feeling & freedom for anything in the world except to find my way back to my family to be together once again.

I met my one and only wife in 1989 when I joined my first international agency. She was the queen of the roost and the boss's blue-eyed girl. She was all about work and I was all about building my career. She was a top performer and as much as I tried I could only manage to emulate half of her capabilities. But I had keen selling abilities and good diction &  presentation skills. She was fiercely ambitious, impatient, fast and single. 

I was climbing the career ladder equally ambitious with a girlfriend in-tow from my previous agency. My new colleague and I spent many hours and weekends working together at the agency, mostly clearing paperwork. We started an affair and I broke the heart of my girlfriend of five years soon after. She became my new girlfriend and moved in with me. 

She proved to be as good a housekeeper as she is an advertising executive. From my traditional baba/nyonya upbringing, I was used to very high standards of housekeeping and F&B. Plus my father came with the package deal. She kept papa happy, in his place and the household in ship shape.

We had Jon out of wedlock. She was happiest. She had always wanted a son of her own. She didn't expect me to hang around after Jon was born, she later tells me. 

But when Zane was born two years later, she agreed to legalise our marriage at the registrar.

From then on we were a happy growing family.

We went into full flight with the arrival of our third and last child, a precious daughter. 

All of our children are such great blessings of joy and happiness. Growing up with our three children made it so easy to weather the burdens of work, life and even ignore the husband/wife relationship. 

We were happy together.  As long as we all had each other.

We quickly outgrew our extensively renovated double storey link-house in Bangsar. We moved to a large landed property in Damansara Heights with lots of space for the children to play and grow. We played all the games that I grew up playing. Football, hockey, cricket, badminton, ping pong and basketball. Except for football I'd beat the crap out of the boys at all the sports. They would beat each other up over squabbles about games. Sore losers et al. But we all laughed it off as good fun and part of growing up. We even had our ears pierced together. 

Life was good, it rewarded us with most privileges of travel and leisure. Mine more. I was chasing the dream of acquiring wealth and business but I was travelling more for leisure than business. I spent time away from the family. Strangely, the thing that I love doing most I avoided. I was basically compulsive and unconscious. Mum stepped up wonderfully raising the children. I did virtually nothing but to just love and adore them. And communicate with them as adults. Still I was largely absent. Not present.

Until Jon got sick.

My life came crumbling down for a while. I quickly snapped into business mode after his diagnosis and prognosis. I went into command mode. Shut down my emotions and rallied the family together to set the context. We searched everywhere for all sorts of remedies. The more I looked outwards for the answers the more confused and frustrated I got. I have never felt more helpless in my life. Desolate. I was losing my son. My Jon. 

There was nothing I or anyone could do. He too took the brutal lashings of his cancer therapies for over a year with dignity and courage. 

Jonathan Byron Gan Ye Zhan sprouted wings and left us early in August 2005, exactly two weeks after his sixteenth birthday. The day Singapore got her independence so did Jon. 

Gone too soon but that young man had a life well lived.

A scholar, sportsman and gentleman. He represented his primary school at debating competitions, tennis, school band, prefect, ran cross-country. Attended Man United soccer school. At VI he was an active boy scout, patrol leader of 1st KL Troop, a member of a rock band and a ladies man. He lived his life in a real hurry. Maybe he knew something we didn't.

He is survived by his brother and sister and not supposed to be us his parents. I guess what they say is true; " it is most tragic for a parent to bury their child." But not unusual as we come to meet many more such families during our journey with Jon. We found common bonds to urge each other on. 

The family felt lost and empty in the void left by Jon. 

We were each mourning him in our own way privately. The loss we felt was just beyond words. None of us knew how to express how we felt about losing Jon that we just kept it in. And I suppose each of us are still mourning Jon. Most of all mum.

To a certain extent, Zane and I had spent a good amount of time discussing our feelings about Jon while chilling, drinking and smoking in his beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn.

I felt it was healthy & invigorating to express long pent up feelings and emotions. If not to make peace with a past event albeit significant. And move on consciously to enhance this life.

Zane I'm hoping is loving and living his life exuberantly. I know he is.

Because he was the brightest, happiest  little spark growing up. Being number two and totally different from Jon who is more like me, as a child he was my exact opposite. And I adore him. He got along beautifully with Summer but not Jon. Quick to speak and act. 

He has great bursts of energy and a pleasant gentle personality. Very likeable. Ruled the school's badminton champion roost for a few years.

He had to brave the big bad world at 17. We literally kicked him out to San Francisco to study Fine Art. After two years of living the good life, getting stoned and hopefully laid in the most expensive city in the US, I made him a proposition after visiting him in his luxury loft in the Tenderloin district- Spend the remainder money set aside for education in SF or be anywhere he desires for work apprenticeship. At the end of his second year, he graduated with an associate degree from University in SF and he moved to New York because that's where Summer is. He landed a job assisting famous analogue photographer Eric Johnson in Manhattan.

Wise move that was because NY has opened his mind to being a jazz historian while he shoots and dates models on the side.

The kind of life I'd be proud to live. Enhancing his life by enhancing how people look. In photos and in person.
His keen choice of jazz music is just about the only thing that surpasses his choice of clothes. His dress sense is legendary in the Gan family. He is certainly putting on the Ritz at least in dress style in New York City which makes him confident, suave and savvy.

Music and fashion aside, his first love and talent I believe is still the craft he loves and was trained for. Photography.

He has a certain presence that when in his presence the model is forced to be present. Allowing him to capture their essence. Each of his model shots bring out the person from the being. Perhaps he's an artist waiting to be born or already in action. Already dabbling into large canvasses with acrylic, the first few pieces I chanced upon were dark. But these are his desires. Who am I to judge. I'm just here to appreciate my son. 

Just as I have appreciated and still appreciate Jon. If he hasn't been stricken with the disease we wouldn't have been such a dysfunctional family that glides in and out of each others lives without fully loving and being with each other. Jon brought us closer together.

*From my vantage right now, his message for us was to slow down, wake up, and live life.  

That's when I know that we don't ever really die. The great consciousness lives on in another form and it's closer to us than we think. It's just one step inside. 

Everyone we love, everyone is inside us. They live on inside us. Which is how they appear even when they are here with us. They live inside us in our experience of them. We only ever perceive anyone or anything inside our head through our sense perceptions. Except physically we get to touch, smell, hear, even lick them, if we want but that's just his physical self. What about his intellectual, emotional and spiritual self?  That makes three parts of the being. These are all experienced in the being. And that you cannot take away from me.  Then isn't it true that Jon still lives in me?  

As long as I am alive Jon lives in my consciousness. Beyond the physical.

As does he in Zane and Summer's hearts and consciousness. Only if they knew how to still the mind and go within. Be still and just observe.

These are qualities which I believe our youngest and most precious child possesses.

She has great stillness and observation skills. A sense of presence when she's around people. She's sensitive and great with kids. She just doesn't like adults except mum while growing up. Dunno if she's still the same. But I think she's matured into a confident, intelligent yet bubbly and exuberant young lady. Always ready to help. And bring joy into people's lives.

Just like the day she was born she has brought rays of sunshine into our lives everyday ever since. What a beautifully appropriate name for my daughter- Summer.

No school, primary or secondary, could contain her for long. For her place is not in the classroom but in the open spaces of the dance stages.

A free spirited being of joy who loves dance. She delivered and over delivered in ballet school with 7 Consecutive Awards for Distinction from the Royal Academy of Ballet in as many years. A record unbroken I dare venture. I still miss ferrying her to and back from dance classes, auditions, practice, shows, and the occasional gala.

She still is the apple of everyone's eyes. Everywhere she goes she lights up the place. 

She teaches me presence with her poise and grace. 

Perseverance from her patience and practice. She inherited the trait of strict discipline and steely determination from her mother and led a full dance-oriented life going for practice, performances, auditions and shoots back home.

So busy she missed the deadline for NY dance school submission for Fall of 2014 but made up for it by winning herself a  scholarship to AMDA-NY in the same year. She did it by coming out tops in a dance workshop in Barcelona. She's awesome, she gets what she wants. If only she knew.

She missed the front entrance but got invited back in through the side door on a red carpet.

Since her admission to AMDA I have yet to see her dance.

I also missed both her shows- performance and choreography in Malaysia’s first off-Broadway theatre; Thicker Than Water staged in Joe’s Pub twice. 

New York is lovely, I enjoyed it most when I spent one afternoon in autumn with Summer in the East Village & Greenwich just strolling down the narrow streets, having lunch, exploring new street corners, book stores, charming old stores, even a Taiwanese tea house. Just spending precious time together. 

I remember that afternoon we walked into a quaint little book store, I enquired if they had any Murakami in stock. The elderly Italian proprietor looked at me with obvious disdain and made a snide remark alluding to my daughter. I deduced that he thought I was a dirty old man dating a pretty young girl and he didn't approve of the liaison. We promptly left with me bemused in the thought that there are still decent men left in New York. And he's Italian.

Well, I am Malaysian of Chinese descent and I am only half decent. Which was why I deserve to be kicked out of my happy home after I strayed from my one and only wife and ended up alone. Clearly I have failed as a husband but I am still a father who is proud of his family. Extremely.

Stay home with your family. Stay safe.

Stay tuned. Literally.