Friday, November 18, 2005

John K. Tseng


My father passed on November 7, 2005. It was sad, especially since he had suffered quite a bit from his battle with brain cancer. I had been driving down myself on the weekends (4 hours each way) to visit him in the hospital. I arranged for his cremation according to his wishes and organized an informal memorial and lunch for him. Since Dova has been quite fussy lately, I had her stay at home with her Daddy while I took Adam to the service. Everyone was quite glad to see Adam as John's future generation.

It is too bad that John decided to leave his future generation completely out of his will and instead gave everything to his girlfriend of 8 years and her daughter. My mom told me to put this information into the thank you email so that everyone would know how mean he really was, but I did not. It is additionally ironic that his death certificate says "Never married". When I filled out the form for the death certificate, there were only choices for "Married" and "Single". Since he was divorced, I checked "Single". Now he is forever filed as "Never married" as though his family of 30 years never existed. I guess that is what he had wanted in the end.

8/20 Addendum: When I filed all the paperwork, I saw that the field for the Marital Status was a write-in. I didn't realize that the choices available were Never Married, Married, Widowed, Separated and Divorced. So I guess it was user error. And also, he didn't completely disown his grandkids because he did give some money for their college education last year. Still nothing compared to the 2 properties he owned in NYC.

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

First, I am truly sorry for your loss.

This is probably a post I should not even leave a comment about because it is such a very personal one. I hope this comment does not anger or upset you in any way.

I just wanted to share that I too had my parents pass on a few years ago, and it was a very difficult time for me and my family. My father died unexpectedly and quickly of a heart attack, and my mother only about 9 months later of lung/brain cancer. (I spent about a month in the hospital with her)

I suspect that losing a parent is always a difficult thing. (my parents were far from perfect, but they did bring me into the world and care for me. They loved my wife and daughters so much. I love and repect them for that.)

I wrote a long paper about my parents and that time in my life and posted it to my website. I wrote it for myself so that I and others in the future would not myself forget my parents. (I guess I was worried that time would dull my memories)

Again, I am truly sorry for your loss.