AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Alan Siung and I am a respiratory physiotherapist.

We moved a lot – from Arima to San Fernando to Maraval to Diego Martin, to America – but I’d say I’m from Victoria Gardens in the West.

I’m married to Catherine Adam, a family physician.

Our eight-year-old son is Callum. My mother-in-law is Scottish.

I really came up Anglican, but my grandmother switched over to Christian Science. So I knew a bit about that, too.

I went to Trinity Junior School and Trinity College in Moka. I repeated O-Levels at St Anthony’s, right behind Victoria Gardens. I used to cross the Diego Martin dry river on my bike and go over to school.

I do believe – and really hope – there is an afterlife. I don’t want to believe that when I’m gone, I’m just nothing, forever!

And life just goes on. I always thought life was like a movie that’s gonna end – but then you start again.

Nobody knows. Nobody ever went and came back. Except Jesus. If you are to believe in him.

I’m back in Maraval again.

Our whole family – mom, dad, sisters, grandmother – moved to the States. I was there 17 years before I came back. I was just turning 21 when we moved to Florida.

My Trini girlfriend couldn’t stay in the US when she was done school, so I came back to Trinidad with her. That’s when I joined this Trinidad rock band, Touchdown.

We got married. I moved back to Trinidad alone in 1998 after we got divorced.

I was 55 when my son was born. Me and my son do

everything

together. And there’s a good reason for that: because I didn’t have the same relationship with my father. Men back then had a fixed image of what a man was supposed to be. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be – but I do know what I am!

My father was 87 when he died, and up until maybe two years before he died, we had (a strained relationship).

My father didn’t think I would ever amount to much. That was a part of the tension between us.

Living in the States and just having O-Levels, it was difficult to have a good-paying job. So when I told him I was going to go back to school when I was 32, his attitude was, “Six months and then you’ll probably drop out!”

I worked in the day and went to school at night.

And the funniest thing was, I went to visit him at Christmas 2019 – and I never visited them at Christmas, but the year before covid, I thought, “My parents are getting older, I’m going to go.” The year before he died.

I went to his house and found he was short of breath and looking like he was labouring to breathe. I did a quick assessment of him and found he was actually in cardiac distress. He was in heart failure. I sent him to hospital right away.

My father spent a week in hospital and I spent every night with him, slept in the room with him, and he was able to get back home two days before I left. From that moment, everything changed between us. He said, “You saved my life, boy!”

The job he had ridiculed and the child least likely to succeed was the one who ended up saving his life.

He eventually died of pro