However prepared you are, it is always sad when you receive that phone call to say that someone very close to you has passed away.
Although everybody had noticed that Thaaththa was showing signs of slowing, after his 85th birthday last March, he would still get about and attend to routine chores.
Things got worse about two months ago, but after a week in hospital and another week in rehabilitation, his characteristic determination saw him return to his normal self. On returning home, sounding his usual enthusiastic self, he described himself to my wife as a “fully rehabilitated” person.
He was loved for his amazing ability to appreciate life’s positives, and he maintained this outlook to the end. When his grandson visited him in hospital a couple of days before his death and asked him, “Why are you here, Seeya, what is wrong?”, he typically replied, “Nothing”, and smiled.
When I last spoke to him, a couple of days before his death (on July 30), I noticed that his voice lacked its usual brightness. I was due to travel overseas, and he said he was looking forward to my return to Australia at the end of August. But it was not to be. It was with a heavy heart that I boarded the plane for the long flight from Washington to Sydney. Thaaththa was no more. I comforted myself with the thought that he had had a full life, and that he had passed away peacefully without any suffering. The trip home gave me plenty of time to reflect on Thaaththa and his long life and career.
Thaaththa was a very unassuming man. He did not say much, and did what he had to do in a quiet, determined way. He was always willing to help if you needed his assistance, whether it was to solve a complex mathematics problem or advise on a suitable school for a child. He treated everybody alike, friends and relations, rich or poor. He was very organised and methodical.
Mathematics education was his vision in life. He was a senior lecturer in the Mathematics Department, at the Teachers’ Training College in Maharagama. His purpose in life was to train hundreds of mathematics teachers and send them out to all corners of Sri Lanka to make mathematics education interesting for future generations. He wanted to send out a message to future teachers that a good foundation in mathematics was important for a child’s development, and that it was the teacher’s duty to make mathematics as interesting as possible.
As Controlling Chief Examiner in Pure Mathematics for the GCE (O Level) for more than 20 years, he influenced many generations of Sri Lankans in an indirect way.
Because a pass in mathematics was an essential for science students seeking a tertiary education, he saw it as his duty to ensure he set a paper that allowed all science students a chance for a higher education. Later, as a Director of Education at the Ministry of Education, he had a chance to develop policies for teacher education in Sri Lanka. He also had the opportunity to visit countries like the USA and Britain to observe and adopt new teacher education techniques for Sri Lanka.
He was very interested in travel and exploring new places. Even in his daily walks he would explore new routes. He travelled extensively in the US in the 1960s, and would show us the hundreds of slides he took on his travels. When we were children, he took us to visit different places in Sri Lanka during the school holidays. Just two months before his death he was contemplating visiting my sister in Bangalore. The “travel bug” is a legacy he has passed on to us, his children.
When the time came for my two sisters and me to go overseas for a higher education, Thaaththa took up an appointment in Africa in order to make our overseas studies a reality.
After my father’s retirement, my parents decided to come and live in Sydney, Australia, to be closer to their children. He kept in close touch with his relatives and friends in Sri Lanka, and visited them as often as possible. My father lost his father when he was five years, and an extended family of aunts and uncles helped my grandmother raise the young family.
This experience made him appreciate the virtues of an extended family, and he always kept in touch with his relatives.
He made contact with old friends who happened to be living in the Sydney area, and made many more new friends through them. He enjoyed the Sydney lifestyle. He would go for leisurely walks, wearing his “tartan beret”, and stroll around the local mall almost every day. Everybody working in the mall, from the bank to the post office staff, knew Mr. Cooray.
He would go to the Sri Lanka Buddhist Vihare as often as he could, and he observed “sil” at least once a year, on Vesak day.
Although he lived overseas, he was always interested in what was happening in his beloved Sri Lanka. At the age of 75, he learnt to use the internet so could look up the Sri Lankan newspapers and catch up on the news. If he found anything interesting, he would tell me about it on the telephone. He followed the ups and downs of the Sri Lanka cricket team very closely. Whenever he heard that someone was coming from Sri Lanka, he would wait to meet that person to get the news first-hand. Whenever a close associate passed away in Sri Lanka, he took it upon himself to write an appreciation for the Sri Lanka newspapers.
As the Rev. Dhammagavesi, chief incumbent of the Lankarama in Sydney said at the “Pansakula”, nothing in this world is permanent – one minute you are there, and the next you are gone.
In her eulogy, my niece quoted the eminent scientist and mathematician Professor Stephen Hawking: “If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, and I’ll stay there forever”.
I think Thaaththa would have liked that.May he attain Nibbana.
By Ranil Cooray |
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