This story is a follow-up to a previous post about my translation of a Chin family gravestone at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.
The grave is shared by my mother’s baby brother, Jimmy Bo‑Gar Chin; newborn twin brothers who died in 1924 within weeks of birth; and three adult siblings who died in old age. The emotional core of the family’s mourning, however, is focused on Jimmy’s sudden death in 1954, and that grief survives most clearly in three handwritten inscriptions on two photographs.
On January 10, 1954, Jimmy was hit by a car and died in front of the family home at 326 7th Street in Oakland Chinatown. He was five years and seven months old. His death was a crushing blow to the entire family especially his mother, Tso Mee Shew.
Tucked into my mother's collection of early family photographs are two images that together tell the story of that grief. One shows Jimmy as a young child with his mother on Christmas morning. The other is a photograph with his siblings two days later. Written on the margins of each photo are poetic couplets — pressed heavily into the paper in blue ballpoint ink by Jimmy's father Chin Pak Yick. Taken together with the couplet carved on the gravestone, they form a remarkable triad of grief: public sorrow, private anger, and, finally, reflective acceptance.
The photo below shows Jimmy with his mother on Christmas Day 1953, 16 days before his tragic death.
|
|
Jimmy with his mother, Tso Mee Shew December 25, 1953, Oakland, CA |
