My Brother Michael

A few months before S.C.'s heart attack, I received a phone call from a stranger in Chicago.
"Are you Michael Chang's sister?" he asked.
"Yes." I said.
"My name is Goldberg. I am sorry to tell you that your brother Michael passed away," he said.

I could not believe it. What happened? How did he die?
Michael was my baby brother, ten years younger than I. 
Goldberg did not give me any details of his death. He asked me to go to Chicago, because I, being Michael's only kin in the U.S. had to identify him. 
Michaael was not under any doctor's care at the time of his death; officially, he died of unknown causes, the authorities had to do an autopsy . . .

S.C. and I went to Chicago immediately.
I was glad that they showed me a picture of Michael on the screen for identification . . . We did whatever we had to do and made funeral arrangements.

I believe Michael had AIDs, though it was not known at that time. 

Michael grew up during all the War years in Shanghai. I don't remember any significant events concerning him when he was young. My ill-tempered tyrant of a brother, Henry, dominated all of us. 
Michael was only about nine when he went to HK. He was a good-looking and smart boy. My parents were very proud of him. We all thought he would make something of himself when he grew up. But it was not to be.

For whatever reason - I believed when he was older, he and Henry had great conflicts and he would not take Henry's bullying and threats, they probably had physical fights - my parents sent him to England for schooling when I was in London. He was a teenager then. But it was not easy being a Chinese school-boy in an English school. He could not take the taunting and the hazing. So father sent him to school in Germany instead. I don't know how long he was in Europe.
When I went back to Hk for a visit in l966, he was back in Hk. I found him in utter depression, not working or going to school. He looked like a lost soul. But no one could help him.
My parents told me very little of what was really going on.
My visit to HK was short. 
I merely found out that Michael was in love with someone when he was in Germany. She got pregnant. Michael wanted to marry her and my father forbid it. 
You wonder why he did not simply break away from home and follow his heart. Well, you have to understand that all of us were Citizens of the World. My family did not belong to any countries at the time, except me, since I married a British Citizen. Michael would not be able to live or work in Germany. My father probably had threatened to disown him if he married his love.

Eventually, Michael went to work for my father. My father had always said that Michael was a great salesman, but he was not at all good as a manger.

Michael's downfall was women. He had three wives. He had four boys by the three different wives. 
The oldest boy went with the mother after she divorced Michael. The second boy was raised by my mother. The two young ones went to Chicago with Michael and our mother after Michael's much too complicated life in HK. Their mother did not want the boys.

After my father died, Michael ran the business in HK For a while, he did well. He lived high and recklessly. He made a great deal of money at one time and then he lost it all. My mother tried to bail him out and failed, and lost all of what my father had left her. 
He and mother and the three boys went to Chicago, a few years before his death. Apparently Michael had been ill for sometime, and eventually he was not able to work. A few months before his death, my mother had a fallout with him and left him with his boys and went back to HK - she then went to live with Henry for a while in Malaya.

Eric, the older boy, was a senior in high school in Chicago then. The two little ones were under school age. Apparently Eric had been taken care of the little ones and their father. The apartment told a sad story.

Goldberg said that he and Michael had been business associates and good friends for a number of years. He probably knew more about Michael and Michael's many wives and children, better than I did.
He said that he would help Eric go to college after he graduated from high school. He would take care of Eric. But he did not know what my mother would want to do with the two little ones. He said that some family he and Michael knew would love to have the boys and wanted to adopt them, if my mother would not object. I wondered if he and Michael had talked about this.
My mother did not object to the adoption. So the boys went to their new adopted family. I was not given their names. I hoped that the little ones grew up in a loving family.
Eric had never contacted me. I hope that he has a family and is happy.

Michael was not even forty years old when he died.