In some cultures family is all-important. This doesn't rule out those families having friends outside their culture, but within a shared culture its members do tend to cling together long after they have migrated outside their country of origin where that culture has been established since time immemorial as far as they are concerned, establishing the patterns of their lives.

And so it is with Sikhs who migrated to Canada generations earlier, raising their own offspring with the tangible flavours of their culture. Some may have few contacts left in their country of origin and look upon Canada as their native country, one with which they completely meld in its values but the culture lives and it thrives. An inextricable part of that culture is the firm clasp of family, as the most meaningful part of life.

The kind of emotional dysfunction and petty arguments and wretched clique-ism that so often permeates families, leading to disinterest in one another and severed ties and bitterness doesn't seem to weigh down such families' firm grip on familial supportive solidarity. One can see this at times of great celebration and during sober times of grief.

One of our very closest neighbours has had a succession of health problems and often surgery related to them in an effort by medical science to restore normalcy to him. Most of those operations have been of only moderate success in their outcomes, and all of them have proven to be a burden to his body's capacity to spring back. Several days ago he underwent the most grave of all surgeries; a triple-heart bypass.

His recovery will be slow, given his body's tendency to recover slowly from all previous interventions. The medical prognosis pre-surgery was that he would be released from hospital between five to seven days post-surgery. The intention was that while he was in immediate recovery to begin physiotherapy; get him up and walking around in the days following surgery in preparation for return home.

That hasn't happened. His pain and discomfort is too great, his heart is beating too rapidly, and the cardiologists are maintaining a close watch on him. His family, wife, children, his siblings and their extended family are virtually at his bedside. He is surrounded by love and support. He is a man who needs it all and more, since he also suffers from clinical depression.

Such is life.