EULOGY:

The Story of Patrick

Six months to two years. It’s impossible to predict how much time a person with inoperable liver cancer has left. Doctors try not to get pinned down. They really don’t know. Treatments can add months, but only if the patient can tolerate the treatments. Six months to two years is the estimate Patrick was given, just over two years ago.

This was pre-pandemic, so when the question of a bucket list came up, travel was still possible. Patrick, however, was clear on what he wanted. No bucket list. No unexplored destinations or unseen sights to check off. There was nothing he yearned to do or see or experience beyond the simple joys of daily life. He loved his home, his husband John, all their little domestic routines, their friends, and their dog Sophie. He loved going to concerts and shows, favourite restaurants, shopping, museums.  His only wish for his remaining time was to have as many more days of “normal” as possible.

Initially it was hectic– appointments with specialists, tests and evaluations for promising therapies like Y90.  By the time the dust settled – and Patrick learned he was not a candidate for those therapies – it was mid March of 2020. The pandemic was in full swing. “Normal life" was on hold.

He always called himself a simple country boy, this urbane man of impeccable taste – connoisseur of cutting edge fashion and fine dining, of music, theatre, literature and art. He did grow up in the rural outskirts of Chia Yi in south central Taiwan, where he was born in 1959. He was devoted to his parents, and in particular was in awe of his mother, Teng Yuan, for her deep wisdom and genius business instincts. His father Yu Piao’s natural way with people  was the perfect complement to her strategic intelligence. They were an unstoppable team. First with their paper factory, then in real estate development.

Patrick’s older brother Janson has traveled from Taiwan to be with us today. Patrick’s niece Vivian is here from Berkeley, where she is in graduate school. Patrick is also survived by his father Yu Piao, who is not well enough to make the journey, his sister in law Pamela and nephew Daniel.

Pretty soon, the country boy grew restless in the countryside. He persuaded his parents to let him finish high school in Taipei. There, in his late teens and early 20s, he began exploring the kind of life – bright lights, big city – that would come to suit him best. He bonded with a tight circle of young friends, both in Taipei and Chia Yi, who remained in close contact throughout his life. In particular, his lifelong best friend, Harrison Ho.

His love of Japanese culture and language led him to live and study in Japan in his early 20s before going to university in America. He and Janson joined an aunt and uncle in North Carolina who had a business there. The brothers attended Guilford College, a progressive Quaker school in Greensboro.

There, Patrick discovered his calling as an artist and was nurtured by caring, encouraging faculty and a new circle of loving, supportive friends. In particular, his best buddy from those years, Todd Owens. Patrick always looked back at Guilford as an idyll of his youth, a fertile ground for self discovery and personal growth – the most deeply formative period of his life.

However, after a field trip to New York, the call of bright lights, big city again proved undeniable. He worked out a way to complete his senior undergrad year through an advanced-placement program at New York University, commuting between New York and Greensboro for faculty evaluations with his paintings in tow.

The NYU program was for undergrad students planning to continue with graduate studies there. Patrick stayed in New York and pursued a Masters Degree in fine art. At NYU, Patrick bonded, as he had done at Guilford, with a handful of perceptive and supportive professors who recognized and encouraged his unconventional vision. 

Patrick was, more than anything, an iconoclast. No institution, convention, or tradition ever went unquestioned in his mind. He never just went along with the way things are supposed to be. He said this sometimes made him feel like an outsider in his homeland, as he rejected rigid cultural expectations and traditional roles. However, his bond with his parents was tight and abundant in mutual respect and admiration. They trusted his judgment in business matters and in life. Though they didn’t always understand his personal choices, they were always supportive, shielding him from anything that others might say.

During his time at Guilford and NYU, Patrick’s other journey of self discovery led to the awareness that he was gay. His undergraduate art, in particular, explored homo-erotic themes abstracted into geometric forms. At Guilford he found community with several other young gay men like himself through a student group. A band of caring and mutually supportive friends, they introduced him to the joy and freedom of the gay club scene and road tripped together to the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. True to form for Patrick, this group became another circle of loyal, life-long friends.

The 1991 New York City Pride March is where Patrick met his future husband, John Slater, a film student at NYU. They soon came to share a tiny, 3rd-floor walk-up apartment in the East Village, embarking on a 30-year life partnership. They decided to mark the day they met, Pride Day, as their anniversary. Every year, it felt to them like New York was throwing a big parade in their honour.

He took the English name Patrick Wang for himself when he became a US citizen in 1994. He chose “Patrick” because it’s John’s middle name. As usual, if established traditions didn’t suit him, he simply invented his own. His original Chinese name is Chien Chung Wang.  That’s how some of you participating today first knew him.

Patrick and John both completed their degrees at NYU in 1993 and made a new home in a funky SoHo loft with a studio space for Patrick. In the years that followed, they worked at art and filmmaking. John opened an editing studio on Madison Avenue. Their many travel adventures took them all over: To Fire Island, Key West and Miami, Provincetown, Vermont, the Hamptons – where Patrick had a teaching gig one summer at Long Island University – the Catskills, California, Taiwan, and Australia.

They relished all that New York life had to offer: dining, shopping at Barneys and Bergdorf, theatre – on Broadway and off, concerts, galleries and museums: The Philharmonic, the Guggenheim, the Modern. But on a vacation to Vancouver in 2002, the natural beauty and quality of life made a deep impression. The following year, after a lot of long talks and weighing of pros and cons, they decided to try a different kind of life and moved to Vancouver’s West End. 

One principal reason for the move was Patrick’s health. He was diagnosed with Hepatitis-C in 1999 after worsening fatigue over several years. Interferon – the only treatment at the time – was not effective for all patients. Six months of punishing, toxic injections left Patrick still with HepC and now also burdened with permanent side effects. He never regained his full strength, and while life in New York is exciting and glamorous, it’s also hard. Vancouver offered a cleaner, quieter, easier life, closer to nature but still with a spark of bright lights, big city.

Vancouver clicked with Patrick and John. The warm-hearted people, the food, the diversity, the thriving gay community, the easy access to natural splendour all made it a perfect fit. They chose Canada as their permanent home, and Patrick became a Canadian citizen in 2015. John in 2016.

They still had an appetite to see and explore new places, but air travel had become difficult for Patrick. So they decided to buy a boat and roam the BC coast together. It still allowed them to travel, but when he needed to, Patrick could always lie down and rest.

Simple Life and Boogie Woogie were the two boats they owned from 2009 to 2016. Aboard those magic carpets, they rode the waves of Georgia Strait for seven summers, up and down the coast, exploring the San Juan and Gulf Islands, Indian Arm, Howe Sound, and Princess Luisa Inlet. They anchored for days at a time in wild, untouched places, watching eagles and orcas, sea lions and harbour seals at play. Patrick’s favourite destinations were Squamish Harbour, where he loved to dock at the foot of The Chief and feel the massive cliff looming above him, and Montague Harbour on Valdez Island, where he and John explored the shallows in their runabout, went for hikes and hung out at the marina café.

Friends often joined them for boat trips, cooking meals together, talking and laughing through the night. Larger groups of friends would gather aboard for Patrick and John’s annual Fireworks party in the summer, anchoring off Second Beach for a front-row view of Vancouver’s legendary fireworks festival, and for their annual Polar Bear Brunch on New Years Day, watching from the warmth and comfort of the boat as thousands of crazy swimmers took the icy plunge.

In Vancouver, Patrick had three different painting studios over time. In 2013 he converted the garage of their house, had insulated and heated, levelled the floor and created a large, clean, open, well lit work space. He adapted his style of painting to accommodate his now shaky hands, but could only produce a few works due to his waning strength. The abstract pointillism of this last period features patterns of paint dabs that exude a vibrant energy and work subtly on the emotions through complex and evocative colour relationships.

In 2015, Patrick was among the first cohort of patients around the world to be cured of Hepatitis C through a new drug regimen. He and John rejoiced at this outcome and and at knowing the virus could no longer harm his liver. They also knew, however, that the cure came very late for Patrick. So much damage was already done, and liver cancer was a very real risk. Regular monitoring followed, and when at the end of 2019 a CT scan revealed a large tumour, they were devastated but not entirely surprised.

Patrick was unwavering in his belief that he had lived a good life and been blessed by good fortune. He said he had experienced and savoured the best of all the things that were important to him. The fabric of his life was woven from bonds of friendship that lasted over decades. He was an artist, an intellectual and mentor, a bon vivant, a wise and good man. He was a son, a brother, an uncle, a husband, and friend, and to each these roles he gave his whole heart.

He was scared at the end, not of dying, but of suffering. His family doctor Brian Montgomery, doctors at the BC Cancer Agency, the palliative care teams at Three Bridges, Ravensong, the Nancy Chan Clinic, and The Cottage Hospice went far beyond the call of duty. They did everything possible to assuage his fears and manage a complex array of changing symptoms, greatly easing his suffering and restoring him to comfort. He did not die in pain or alone. In his final moments, he was with John and Sophie. He was embraced in the arms of love, and he knew it.