‘The closeness of cousins in our society’
BY the grace of God, we’re all born into our respective families and brought up alongside our siblings, if we’re lucky; and with cousins, if our families were bigger than just only sons or daughters.
It’s been said that we cannot choose our relatives, but we can pick and choose our friends.
Unlike in the West where real life stories are told of long lost relatives being located by lawyers and solicitors after they were found to have been named as inheritors of vast fortunes left behind by rich recluses who had named them in their wills, such cases are extremely rare in Asian societies. More often than not, we would read about sons and daughters challenging each other in the courts of law with regard to inheritance claims, especially more so when the deceased parents had, during their lifetime, headed more than one single household or had been in more than one marriage.
As for myself, I come from a very large family, somewhat typical for Sarawak whether one is Chinese, Malay, Dayak, or of mixed racial composition. Somehow the word ‘Eurasian’ cannot be applied for intermarriages between the different local races.
‘Mixed blood’ seems rather crude, but as of now, there has not been a terminology found to suggest a background of a mixed local marriage – maybe a ‘plural Sarawakian’?
For this column, I had sat down to count the number of cousins that I have, from both sides of my parents – though I should forewarn that once taken into the realms of second or third cousins removed, this list would be nigh impossible to do a count of.
From my father’s side, the Ongs, I had counted 49 first cousins; from my mother’s, the Tans, I counted 24; thus, making a grand total of 73, which can be considered as being quite sizable.
The oldest living cousin would be pushing his or her mid-80s, and the youngest, just around half that. Many have passed on in recent years, but more than two-thirds are still with us.
Much has been written about parents and siblings in most recorded essays and articles about family life and growing up in the 1950s-1980s, but very little have been written about cousins.
My cousins played very important roles in my growingup years, contributing to my outlook and world view, helping to cultivate my future interests, and broadening my views and philosophy on life in general.
Today, I would like to take some time to pay tribute to some of them.
Between my most ‘learning curve’ years of 12 and 17, my two closest cousins who had helped me grow into my teenage years were David Ong and Charles Ong: both had stayed for some period at Grandpa Ong’s homestead at Ong Kwan Hin Road, and were a few years’ older than me.
David impressed me with his artistic skills and fluent writings. He was very good in arts and drawing, and also happened to be more of an introvert and a great thinker. Later in life, he wrote a lifelong journal and went on hikes, but kept very much to himself.
Charles was the opposite – an extrovert, charming, knowledgeable and worldly. His many skills would be put to good use later in life.
The combination of these two great friendships gave me, at an early age, a sense of balance.
There must be a middle ground between the bravado of the extrovert and the artistically-inclined introvert – a place I tried very hard to locate and establish for myself. It seemed to me to be the ideal place to be.
Charles passed away at a rather young age; David after he had retired from the civil service.
There were cousins who were a lot older than me, whom I had treated as mentors.
Among those whom I could name were Albert, Daisy, Nancy and Doris from Uncle Ong Kee Hui’s brood; Richard, Bobby and Ramsay from Kee Chong’s.
Albert was born handsome. A true-blue Romeo, his many exploits were legendary. As he is still with us, I shall say no more than that!
Daisy was the family’s first big success as she became a doctor, migrated to the UK and married an Englishman. She was always the Ong’s flagbearer of my generation. Daisy passed on some years back. Her two younger sisters, Nancy and Doris, I was more familiar with for very different reasons. Although as children, we had occasionally shared ‘playtime’ during family gatherings and at events, I was treated more as a ‘siaw tee tee’ (little brother) to them both.
There was one episode, when I was about 10 or 11 climbing up a mangosteen tree in Grandpa Ong’s orchard, Nancy had accidentaly poked a 12-foot long pole with a bended iron fishhook going after some fruits but had missed, and the hook scratched my upper left cheek instead.
I bear that scar up till today. Nancy later married George Teo, a work colleague of mine in The Borneo Co, and they had migrated to Melbourne. She passed on many years ago.
With Doris, we were both very close to our youngest grand-uncle Ong Tiaw Sian, and later in life, we would spend long wonderful evenings at his residence reminiscing the good old days.
Today his son, my uncle Roland, takes his place.
With cousins Richard and Bobby, I was enthralled with their lifestyles. They had lived big and were the popular personalities in town (dare I say, even throughout Sarawak).
Both had inherited the Ong’s genes of being able to make friends easily and of them being from all races and all walks of life.
I never asked why they did not enter politics!
Among those who were around my age group, when they were all living within the same neighbourhood, I was close to cousins Cecilia (Yim), Tony, Amy and Bimbo (Benny), and Pauline.
On my mother’s side, due to the infrequencies of our interaction, the cousins did not manage to be as close.
However, during my early years, I shared many happy hours with Linda, Banky (RIP), Benny, Michael (Teck Lee) and Ping Tuang (Terence), and was cared for in childhood by cousin Ah Bee.
In retrospect, I must say that if not for the efforts of my mother to ensure then that we would maintain this ‘closeness of family’, I doubt if we would all still be in touch with each other today.
It is rather sad and tragic to see, more often than not, that very few of our present generation of families are still keeping in communication with each other.
Yes, probably just for weddings, birthdays and that sure certainty in life – funerals.
There are many ways now to start a reconnection exercise, and I am gratified to see that this has been happening – proactive family members having set up their own Facebook family groups and pages, family WhatsApp channels and other means.
Within my own family, I had many years back initiated chat-groups – one for my own immediate family; another, a Sarawak-based ‘Ong Family Group’; and also the ‘Extended Ong Family’ (administrated by Sean Collum in Sydney).
If you have yet to start one for your own family, maybe now would be a good time to do it?