When the Moon Met the Tiger
Bringing my daughter around the world to meet her grandfather on his deathbed. Original story at Catapult.
In his youth, my grandfather was a tiger. Tall, broad-shouldered, full-faced, he had led soldiers into the mountains of the Golden Triangle to set ambushes for drug runners and bandits. Later in life, he wore bespoke tailored suits, drank scotch in one hand, and smoked a cigarette in the other while talking military tactics with Moshe Dayan and negotiating treaties with Josip Broz Tito. He could not smile now; there was a feeding tube in his throat. He could not run at me screaming, “sumo!” because his groin was attached to a catheter. His hair was white and thin. His hands, which had held machetes and assault rifles and scotch, were liver-spotted and paralyzed.
But his eyes, clouded and misted with cataracts and pain, turned to me and Sanda. She held out her arm, her fingers, and clutched his nose in her tiny, quarter-Burmese hands. He kept his eyes on his great-granddaughter. She kept her hand on her great-grandfather. The room was still.