If you haven’t seen these before—no need to fret, this isn’t spam. This is where I’ve kept a small blog of my life this past year and a half as my dad battled brain cancer, and this marks the final post.
Relevant Links
https://www.redmonfuneralhome.com/obituary/ting-wu (slideshow of photos available)
https://www.gofundme.com/f/ting-wus-memorial-fund (assistance with funeral costs)
Once the video of the memorial service has been processed, I will also post it here.
Update
Following another surgery in February, he recovered well and went on three new chemotherapy drugs up until mid-July, when the tumor was found to have continued growing despite treatment efforts. Luckily, I was home for most of the summer once again, with my manager at Amazon being very lenient with our return-to-office policy, which I was grateful for.
We once again sought out advice from the doctor who performed the surgery in February for one more resection planned in early August. By late July, his energy was already waning from his previous energetic self, able to take multi-mile walks in the park to being mostly couch-ridden by the time the surgery was performed. The doctor told us following the surgery that the tumor had grown so wildly that he was only able to get 95% of the highlighted (enhanced) tumor cells (the fastest-growing cells) while leaving a significant portion of the non-enhanced tumor (the ones that don’t light up with the dye and therefore cannot be differentiated from normal brain tissue). He spent a week in the hospital recovering, while afterwards, he remained bedridden while my mother tried to organize new treatments and radiation therapy for him again.
I returned to Seattle for two weeks following to finish up my internship, only to return home on Sep. 2nd for the week before fall term started to see him in the hospital after multiple falls. They also discovered new tumor growth on the left side of the brain during this time, as well as renewed growth in the original site. My paternal grandmother (who arrived in May to see me graduate and be with him) returned to Shanghai the same week after she started showing serious ailments of her own.
The week of September 3rd, he was transferred to the ICU after his blood oxygen dipped significantly, which was caused by a pulmonary embolism. It was at this time our oncologist visited and recommended we move to hospice care, which we did. This week, he remained bedridden and slowly began to lose his speech ability, with myself only able to hear him by Wednesday, and with no intelligible speech by Friday. His mouth would move but no sound would come out. He was moved to the hospice ward after his pulmonary embolism was stabilized and given a feeding tube, as he lost control of his ability to swallow. He spent more and more time asleep, but was able to hear us and the world plenty well, and my mom and I put on the US Open on Friday and Sunday to let him watch Djokovic, his favorite tennis player, win his 24th grand slam. Friends from out of town also began visiting by this point, including friends from 20+ years ago that he hadn’t seen in 15 years. I left for school on Sunday morning, Sep. 10th, having said my goodbyes the day before.
He was eventually moved to a hospice facility in Twinsburg, reducing the drive for my mom down to 10 minutes. His condition remained stable, with gradual reductions in feeding tube rate as his body required less energy. As I pulled an all-nighter to write the first draft of my Fulbright Taiwan ETA essays (that should have been finished over the summer had it not been for worry over his deteriorating condition), I went to sleep at 9am the morning of Sep. 24th.
He passed away one hour later. I woke up to messages of condolence and missed phone calls from my grandparents. I called my mom that evening to set a date for the funeral the next weekend, while planning in my head how to tell my professors and teammates of my departure from the busy Dartmouth term I was in. I booked tickets to go home on Thursday, waking up at 4am to catch an 8:50am flight from Boston. At home, I and my cousin from California were kept busy arranging funeral matters all the way until Saturday.
We held a memorial service on Sep. 30th, 11am, at Redmon funeral home. It was an emotional service and many gave eulogies, including myself (full text attached below). Once again, family friends I hadn’t seen in many many years came from all over the country to see him. They stayed for the day and grabbed meals with us, with one family staying over and leaving the next day, along with my cousin who came from California. I returned to school on Monday.
I don’t know what the future holds. People keep asking if I’ve got post-graduate plans lined up. Truthfully, if the past year and a half has taught me anything, I don’t want to work at all if I can help it, or at least, not immediately after college. Hopefully I can be in Taiwan at this time next year, teaching English and exploring a new country. In the meantime, I’ll try to have as much fun as I can while I’m in Hanover while helping my mom at home sell off the remainder of his business inventory and downsize from our current house.
Thanks everyone for having the patience to read these often long-winded and pedantic blog posts (especially last year). My father, my mother, and I (and everyone else that helped us) all fought the good fight. With that, I’m signing off on this chapter of my life. Toast to a new chapter and to more fun times ahead. (P.S. If you’re on campus, please ask me for a meal starting Oct. 18! Time with friends dampens the pain.)
My Eulogy (with Chinese Translation Following)
Uncles, aunts, friends, and family, thank you for joining me at this celebration of my dad’s life.
He was born in November of 1974 in the Dàbié mountains during a raging snowstorm, and he spent his childhood at the army camp where my grandparents were serving. In middle school, his family brought him to Shanghai, where he would call home for the next decade and more of his life, where after 20 years of hard studies, he was directly admitted to Fudan University’s biology department, where he received both his bachelors and master’s degrees with top marks.
In 2000, he came to the US, starting as a biology PhD at Kent State University. While studying, he found biology to be too tedious, and instead found new skills on the side as a car mechanic, tinkerer, and DIY-er. While my grandparents were still raising me in Shanghai, he eventually shelved his academics and started his own online business selling cameras, printers, and other old electronics. Through his already mechanical inclination and know-how, he was able to buy heavily discounted broken machines and get them working again, not an easy feat without any engineering background, and yet, he would take the time to learn on his own and gather some profit along the way. With this knowledge and continued practice everyday, he eventually built his business into a full-time operation that he continued to run until even as late as two months ago, all in pursuit of his American Dream, which he arguably achieved.
In 2005 when he and my mom finally brought me to the U.S., is when he finally got the chance to raise me, starting in the neighborhoods of Kent and eventually settling down in Hudson. According to him, he said he raised me too harshly, but honestly, I don’t remember enough. I guess it wasn’t too harsh, because I grew up ok, and he managed to pass his love of tinkering and engineering know-how to me too. Even though he was a hands-off kind of father, the time he spent with me was always very intentional—always spent trying to teach me something, whether that be practicing tennis, teaching calculus, how to fix something that broke in the house, or how to do basic car maintenance. Despite saying he regretted not participating much in my college application process, he was still proud of my achievements, writing an open letter of appreciation after I was accepted to Dartmouth.
Along with this, he was fiercely independent, never liking other people telling him what to do. Each of our family vacations would be planned by him, he never called contractors to fix or maintain anything in the house, and told our neighbors off when they complained about our backyard garden. Simultaneously, he never liked waiting on people either, so he was always a little annoyed if I walked out of school 5 minutes late. When he was told he could no longer drive after his second surgery, you could tell he was annoyed and frustrated, having lost his functional independence in our car-dependent suburban town. Similarly, when his mind slowed down after the surgeries, he was annoyed at his own lack of brain processing power, as he took pride in his own thinking ability. And when my mom called me back from school to help last year, he felt bad at having disrupted my college journey, insisting he could’ve done fine on his own.
His only real regret was how early he had to leave us. After the first surgery, he vowed to teach me as much as he could before he passed, and I could tell his sense of urgency when I first went home to see him. He took each opportunity of fixing a household item to teach me something new, all the while fighting the cancer back long enough to see my college graduation, his one last wish, fulfilled this past June. His impact on me and in shaping who I am today will never be forgotten.
Farewell, and Rest in Peace
爸
(Translated using DeepL)
叔叔、阿姨、朋友和家人，感谢你们和我一起参加我父亲的殡葬。
1974 年 11 月，在一场肆虐的暴风雪中，他出生在大别山区，在我祖父母服役的军营里度过了童年。初中时，家人把他带到了上海，在那里度过了十多年的人生。在那里，经过 20 年的寒窗苦读，他以第一名的成绩直接考入复旦大学生物系，并获得了学士和硕士学位。
2000 年，他来到美国，开始在肯特州立大学攻读生物学博士。在学习过程中，他发现生物学太乏味，于是转而寻找新的技能，当起了汽车修理工、修补匠和杂工。当我的祖父母还在上海抚养我的时候，他最终搁置了学业，开始了自己的网上生意，销售相机、打印机和其他旧电子产品。由于他本来就有机械方面的天赋和知识，他能买到打了大折扣的坏机器，并让它们重新运转起来，这对没有任何工程背景的人来说并非易事，但他却会花时间自学，并顺便赚取一些利润。凭借这些知识和每天坚持不懈的实践，他最终将自己的生意做成了全职经营，甚至直到两个月前，他还在继续经营，这一切都是为了追求他的美国梦，可以说，他实现了自己的美国梦。
2005 年，他和我妈妈终于把我带到了美国，他也终于有机会把我抚养长大，从肯特郡的街区开始，最终在哈德逊定居下来。据他说，他把我养大得太严厉了，但老实说，我已经记不清楚了。我想这并不算太严厉，因为我成长得还不错，而且他也把他对修补和工程知识的热爱传给了我。尽管他是个放手不管的父亲，但他花在我身上的时间总是很用心–总是试图教我一些东西，无论是练习网球、教微积分、如何修理家里坏掉的东西，还是如何做基本的汽车保养。尽管他说很遗憾没有过多地参与我的大学申请过程，但他仍然为我的成就感到骄傲，在我被达特茅斯大学录取后，他还写了一封公开信表示感谢。
除此之外，他还非常独立，从不喜欢别人对他指手画脚。我们家的每个假期都是他一手策划的，他从不叫承包商来修理或维护家里的任何东西，当邻居抱怨我们家后院的花园时，他就会把他们赶出去。同时，他也不喜欢等人，所以如果我放学晚了 5 分钟，他总是有点恼火。当他在第二次手术后被告知不能再开车时，你可以看出他很恼火和沮丧，因为在我们这个依赖汽车的郊区小镇，他失去了功能上的独立性。同样，当他的思维在手术后变得迟钝时，他也为自己缺乏大脑处理能力而恼火，因为他对自己的思维能力引以为豪。去年，当我妈妈把我从学校叫回来帮忙时，他为打乱了我的大学生活而感到难过，坚持认为他一个人也能做得很好。
他唯一真正的遗憾是不得不早早离开我们。第一次手术后，他发誓要在去世前尽可能多地教导我，我第一次回家看他时就能感受到他的紧迫感。他利用每次修理家用物品的机会教我一些新东西，同时与癌症抗争了足够长的时间，直到我大学毕业，这是他最后的心愿，在今年六月得以实现。我们永远不会忘记他对我的影响，也不会忘记他塑造了今天的我。
永别了，安息吧
爸
Once a video of the service has been
Love you forever, Wendell. Words cannot describe how proud I am of you…which means your dad feels the same to an exponential degree.
Stay strong and take care.