Inheriting My Culture - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages I remember very well it was on the 24th of August 2009, a Thursday afternoon when I received a call from my mother. Little did I know that this would be the call that would change my attitude towards the culture of my people. I was with my friends shooting pool at the campus lounge. She told me that my grandfather who we nicknamed “Pa” had asked for me to go visit him in hospital. At the time he was eighty years old and had been diagnosed earlier in the year with throat cancer. By the time the cancer was caught it had grown so much that the doctors said he had a maximum of eight months to leave. So after being given the news by my mother I left my friends and decided to go see him.
On reaching the hospital I found my mum and my extended family waiting in the hall way with most of them soaked in tears. Instantly I assumed the inevitable had happened and I also broke down into tears. When my mother saw me she told me that my grandfather was still alive but the doctors had informed them that he only had a few hours of life. I went to the cancer ward and entered his room. When he heard the door he immediately asked;” Chang is that you?” and I answered while crying; “yes grandfather”. He turned his head with a lot of effort after noticing I was crying and stretched out his hand towards me and told me that there was no need for crying because he was going to a better place. I went closer to him and held his hand. He told me that there was not much time left and that he had something to important to tell me. He pointed at the closet and told me to go pick a brown leather bag. I did as he instructed and brought it to him. He asked me to open the bag and after opening the bag I saw two sets of painting brushes and some ink. This is where he informed me that we come from a family of brush painters and that the art was handed down from father to son for hundreds of years. He then told me that since my father was not alive and I was the oldest male child in our family that it was my turn to continue the family culture and that I should also hand it down to my siblings in future. He started coughing heavily and managed to utter “do not forget your roots Chang” before the doctors and nurses came in and asked me to go outside. I went to the hall way and five minutes later the doctor came to where we had sat in the waiting hall while nodding his head. Everyone broke into tears as we found out “Pa “had passed on. According to our culture, if an elderly person dies, a wake should be held for at least three days then the body is cremated. Due to financial constraints, the family decided to hold a wake for my grandfather one week after we had raised money to clear the enormous hospital bill. I decided to research on the tools my grandfather left me in order for me to paint a picture within that one week for it to be displayed during the wake in memory of my late grandfather. After doing a lot of research in the library about the painting brushes my grandfather left me I discovered that I come from a generation of remarkable painters. I discovered that our family was specifically renowned for a type of painting known as Chinese brush painting. This is a type of art painting in China where once a paint brush strokes the Painting paper with painting ink, it is neither corrected nor is it improved (Cherrett, 2). No sketch or model whatsoever is used in the course of brush painting. From the ...Download file to see next pagesRead More