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Grandpa died an hour ago. 

I’m not sure how I feel. Hearing my father cry over the phone before he abruptly hung up puts the whole situation in a more acutely verifiable light than did my mother breaking the news, which simply put me in shock. And shock, though immediately jolting, is actually quite a numbing sensation once it settles. 

In a patriarchal society such as China, the death of a father’s father is a deeply transformative ordeal. The family unit is central to Chinese culture, philosophy and political science. Everyone is now looking to my father, the youngest of his siblings but the only brother to his three sisters, to lead the family into mourning. 

My father is grieving in a way that I can’t understand because since I left China at three years old, I had only a cross-continental relationship with my grandparents. To me, my grandfather was an obstinate man. That’s what I know him for primarily. He survived nearly 10 years on dialysis when younger victims of acute kidney failure maxed out at eight on average. After he was hospitalized a week ago after partying too hard at my cousin’s wedding banquet, he repeatedly tried to escape.

But then what made my grandfather human to me was a story my mother once told me about him when all I personally knew of the man was his short temper and his illness. 

When my grandfather was young and his mother passed away, he had been presented with the challenge of finding a place to bury her. Back then, Chinese families were buried in clan plots. My great-grandmother was either a divorced, illegitimate or second wife to my great-grandfather, but in any case she was not an actual member of the Du clan. She could not be buried in the Du plots nor her maiden family’s plots because she had technically married. Thus, my grandfather personally begged each household of his father’s family to allow him to bury his mother on their land, carrying her ashes from door to door. 

No, I don’t think I’ve ever heard my father cry, but what unsettles me more than that are my dry eyes. I don’t want to over-analyze my feelings toward my grandfather. There are lots of things I don’t understand about him, such as his feelings toward his American granddaughter for one.

Respect is all my family asks. This is where the etiquette of mourning comes into play. Ritual covers for awkward, ambiguous feelings.