I recently stumbled upon this video of my grandparents’ 80th birthday celebration from May 2009. At the time, I was based in Beijing on my Fulbright, and my parents were visiting China from the U.S. to visit my mother’s side of the family in Nanjing. We had an elaborate dinner at a nice hotel by 玄武湖，Xuanwu Lake, several blocks from my grandparent’s home on 中央路, Zhongyang Lu, one of the main thoroughfares of the (now rapidly expanding and increasingly unfamiliar) city. It was the second time in my lifetime my entire mom’s side of the family had congregated under one roof.

The atmosphere was festive: it was loud; there was storytelling and laughter; there was an overabundance of food, drink, and cake (most of which had to be taken home, as pictured below). The dinner also featured the typical birthday customs for celebrating longevity and honoring elders: long life noodles, peaches, and a gold thread hand-embroidered character for “longevity,” 寿 (shòu). It was the classic Chinese dinner party.

While the birthday celebration brought everyone physically together, and despite having visited Nanjing numerous times over the years, I had never felt close to my China-based family. Tried as I might, I could not relate to them. I cannot remember a single time that I’ve hugged any of my Nanjing relatives. Sometimes, I would get a handshake. Two of my male cousins were obsessed with video games that consumed their after-work lives (how they have girlfriends is beyond me), thus hindering any chance of human-to-human interaction. My younger (also male) cousin, who tested into a university in Hainan, dropped out because he couldn’t bear to be so far away from home. Now he’s studying logistics at a vocational college in Nanjing and going through the typical middle-class urban teenager angst-against-the-world phase, albeit a several years later than the average Western boy. I rarely saw most of my aunts and uncles, who had moved to the suburbs to be closer to work. Bottom line: I didn’t know them well enough, and they didn’t know me either. I was an elusive presence, related by blood but completely different in demeanor and outlook. While I don’t know them well, Nanjing has and will always be associated with them, as if their presence were a constant.

It came as a surprise to me when my grandfather passed away on February 23 of this year. How could he be gone? Every time I visited, we went through the same routine. He was always sticking his head out the window or pacing around the neighborhood as he awaited my arrival from the train station or airport (or my return if I had stepped out to wander the streets). Upon reuniting with my grandfather, we would reenter the gate of their apartment complex and bump into neighbors lounging in an old La-Z-Boy or preparing vegetables for dinner. Every time, my grandfather would smile at them, point to me, and say, with his chin proudly cocked towards the air, “This is my granddaughter. She is from the U.S.” Upon climbing the three flights of stairs to their home, his usual routine would be to point at photographs of me as a young child that were placed under the glass tabletop, and tell me that was me, as a young child. Then he would ask me if I remember sitting on the back of his bicycle as he navigated the complex and intertwining neighborhoods when I first visited in 1990. Unfortunately, the conversation never veered too far from that.

Now, upon rediscovering and watching the video, I was reminded of each of my relatives’ unique personalities—however vibrant or dull—and I wished that I had been able to experience more, so that I had a deeper impression than my extremely superficial knowledge of their lives. With three out of four of my grandparents gone, I feel immense regret to have failed to hear and understand their stories, opinions, and points of view. I hope this is the last time I let memories and stories slip away before I have a chance to hear them, remember them.

Rest in Peace, 公公.