VIVIAN LI

Moving on with a heartacheby Rainbow Ngai

Miss Cheung Tse-ching has a close relationship with her mother.

“I believe that dying alone like my father is very scary.”

Miss Cheung went to Malaysia with her father in 2002.

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The world of 16-year-old Chelsea Cheung Tse-ching has changed

since March 2003. Not only did she have to accept the change in learning environment, but also the fact that someone important has been missing in her life.

Miss Cheung lost her father, Cheung Kin-lee, to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Mr Cheung was unexpectedly infected with SARS when he went to Ward 8A at the Prince of Wales Hospital for regular

Hepatitis B check-up. Without having a chance to see his daughter, he passed away after two weeks of hospitalisation.

For Miss Cheung, everything changed after her father’s death. No one was there to pick her up after school every day. Her father was missing at her primary school graduation ceremony. Her learning environment and social network changed when she was admitted to a new secondary school. Even her contact with her father’s family became less frequent since

there was not much to talk about without her father.

Holidays and special occasions are particularly hard on Miss Cheung and her mother. Holidays remind them that someone is missing in their lives. Miss Cheung said they have never travelled, their former favourite family activity, ever since her father’s death because travelling becomes meaningless without her father.

She copes with the pain by not touching on it again. When

the media broadcast different programmes related to the recollection of Hong Kong in the past ten years, Miss Cheung became very frightened and refused to watch or know anything related to SARS.

“I want to skip the entire year of 2003,” she rushed into saying, “Watching it over again is scary.” She would rather turn off the television than confront the past again.

The We Care Education Fund, established in 2003 under Social Welfare Department to help any children who lost either one or both of their parents from SARS, has organised activities for SARS-affected families, but both Miss Cheung and her mother are unwilling to participate in any of the gatherings for the same reason – to avoid the past.

“Everyone has the same background there, and you are bound to talk about the past,” Miss Cheung said. She believes that questions like “How are you?” and “Do you feel better now?” are only phrases to start a conversation without any meaning.

“I just don’t like chatting in this kind of environment,” her mother, Lee Suk-tak said. “My heart aches as I see that group of SARS orphans again.”

Her mother added that a social worker will contact them by phone to review the fund twice a year and notify them of new activities, but they rarely approach the social worker.

Her father’s death has reminded her that death is nearby. But there is something even more frightening than death. “I believe that dying alone like my father is very scary,” she said. “Being alone is scary,” she added.

Being the only child, Miss Cheung is very attached

to her mother because she understands how painful loneliness is. She would rather go out with her mother than with her friends. “I like going home to spend time with mummy, especially when she has days off,” she said.

Her attachment to her mother made her short stay in Boston a painful experience when she went for a summer exchange programme two years ago. She said she could not understand why she cried every night during her stay.

“When I first arrived at the United States, I started crying and I couldn’t stop,” she said. Other than crying, she would call her mother every day until her mother had to stop her and asked her to send email instead.

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Soon after she returned to Hong Kong, she realised that her greatest accomplishment in Boston was becoming more independent. Yet she often questions whether she can truly be independent. “I was very scared of leaving my mother on her own,” she said.

“My mummy had my dad to take care of her before his death, but now I must look after her myself,” she said, her voice becoming high-pitched with struggling to hold back her tears.

Taking care of her mother has become her first priority in life after her father’s death. Out of her devotion to her mother, she even changed her childhood aspiration.

Miss Cheung dreamed of being a teacher when she was a child, but now she wants to be an accountant. “Accountants make a lot of money,” she said, “I can then take care of my mother.” Though her mother has a stable job, Miss Cheung still thinks finding a well-paid job will assure that her mother gets the best quality of life.

Another reason for her change of career preference is her father’s influence on her. According to Miss Cheung, her father was a dedicated and well-respected Biology teacher. Being his daughter, she worries

that she cannot become a role model for her students. “My dad was an excellent teacher and I don’t want to ruin his name,” she said.

Apart from ruining her father’s name, Miss Cheung also worries about disappointing her father again. She vividly remembers the last thing she told her father was that she had failed her English dictation, which gave him a very bad impression of her before his death.

Carr y ing her father ’s expectation, Miss Cheung has studied very hard to achieve good grades in school, especially for the upcoming Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE). Not only is she nervous about the examination like other form five students, she is also anxious about getting examination results.

“Although my marks are decent, I continue to attend the tutorial lessons because my dad was very smart and he received several A’s in his HKCEE,” she said. “So I wonder why I am not as smart as him and I attend the tutorial lessons to improve my marks.”

Though the bread-winner has gone, Miss Cheung and her mother are now financially stable, especially with the support of the We Care

Education Fund, which provides them with HK$50,000 a year for Miss Cheung’s tuition and living expense. The fund also pays for other academically-related activities, like exchange programmes and tutorials.

Miss Cheung is going to take the HKCEE this year.

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