In her column “Nostalgic Thoughts,” Alaina Zhang ’27 reminisces on the past and reflects on why we miss it at all.

I’m lucky to have known three of my great grandparents as a child. Maybe even four, if I also count my dad’s grandmother, my great grandmother, who saw me on my 100th day celebration and passed away soon after. It’s strange that in English I have to describe her relationship to me in such detail. If I had known her, I would have called her Tai Nai Nai. In Chinese there are enough terms to describe the exact familial relationships people had to me, but that’s lost when I try to explain who they are in English. 

Tai Po, my mother’s mother’s mother, I got to spend a lot of time with. Her name was Xu Yun Xian. She stayed with my grandmother’s older sister just a neighborhood away from where I lived with my grandparents. During Chinese New Year, we would visit her. All my grandma’s siblings would be nearby. Tai Po would pat my head, then ask me which stuffing I wanted for my dumplings. My favorite was chives, shrimp and eggs, but sometimes she got them confused and put in pork and cabbage instead. I didn’t really mind. It was nice to just get to see her. 

Tai Ye Ye was my father’s father’s father. He had probably nine children and my grandpa was the middle child. He lived with my grandpa’s youngest brother. Every time I visited him, Tai Ye Ye would be playing Mah-Jong with a few of his children who were grandparents already. I was only in kindergarten at the time, but I loved watching and hearing the tiles click against the table. He saved hard fruit candies and gave them to me. Tai Ye Ye himself only ever ate bananas. He was already well over 90 at the time and had no teeth left. 

A few years after I had gone to Canada, I dreamed of my Tai Gong, my mother’s father’s father. It had been a few years since he passed away. In the dream, I was in an elevator with him and my grandpa. Tai Gong was in a wheelchair, but I knew we were all happy. When I told my mom, she said that it had been his death anniversary that very day. I felt re-connected to him, and also guilty for not thinking of him as often as I once did. 

Tai Gong is the great great grandparent I remember most vividly. When I knew him, he had lost all of his hair due to his illness. He had only the intelligence of a child and had trouble with names. I was picking up drawing at the time and we would sit side by side and draw circles together on the desk. I remember his eyes, so innocent even from my child perspective, clear and free of memories.

Before I moved to Canada, Tai Gong passed away. My mother was already in Canada at the time and did not make it to the funeral. There was a lot of tension hanging in the air as I watched my grandpa and his younger brother, Tai Gong’s sons, debate about who should get Tai Gong’s house. It didn’t seem right that they would argue about that. They were brothers. They always acted friendly towards each other. Tai Gong had just left. Was this all they cared about? I felt like I was feeling the death more than anyone. Everyone else went about their adult business, and all I could think about was Tai Gong and the time we spent together. I was doing the right thing. 

My dad and I rode a huge bus with everyone else heading to the funeral. When we got there, I saw Tai Gong sleeping inside his coffin. They had put makeup on him, yet somehow he looked paler than when he had been alive. It made his skin an artificial white and it was difficult to find traces of the Tai Gong who drew circles with me in his sunlit bedroom. We circled the coffin and my dad handed me a coin to toss inside to wish Tai Gong luck on his way to heaven. I wondered whether it would hurt him when the coins landed. It was then that it struck me, when I tossed the coin, that Tai Gong had truly left me. Tears fell down my face. I kept crying. I’ve never cried that hard since. I didn’t know why I cried so hard. We were so many generations apart. In another world, we never would have met. 

On the way back, I sat in the front row of the bus, glancing outside past the dark blue curtains swaying by the window until I started to cry again. The sky was cloudy. The wind picked up. I felt heavy. 

A year later, I bid farewell to my hometown. 

In middle school, as my mom and I woke up to a Vancouver morning and got ready for breakfast, she received a phone call and started crying by the sink. I hugged her tight. It was rare to see my mother cry. Tai Po, her grandmother, had passed away. I felt very little this time. Perhaps it was the distance. Maybe I’ve grown up. Neither of us made it to the funeral. We were too far away. I felt guilty that the same impact that had hit me during Tai Gong’s death never arrived even as I prayed for it to. 

Then, in high school, Tai Ye Ye also passed away. I had lost my three great great grandparents. We didn’t make it to that funeral either. 

This spring break, I visited Tai Gong’s gravestone. It was a two hour drive from my hometown, and we took turns saying things to him. I told him I was doing well, that I still remembered him, that I had gotten so much better at drawing. I’ve always had outwardly flapping ears, and looking at Tai Gong’s faded photo from his younger years, I realized I had inherited it from him. It was nice to know a part of him will always be with me. 

We burned a lot of paper money. The wind picked up halfway and my grandpa said it meant Tai Gong had received all the food and money we had brought with us. Then, I plucked the petals off the chrysanthemum we had brought and scattered them onto the stone, and poured rice wine over everything. 

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that each of my family members have lived an actual life before me. The bits and pieces I hear about their past from my family are enough for now, but one day, when my nostalgia is finally strong enough to pull me back to Wuxi, I’ll write their histories, imagine their childhoods and relive my precious time with them.

For now, my great great grands are in the wind.