Posts tagged with "family"

Being Strong For My Grandmother

The can­cer has spread to her bones and sev­er­al major organs now. We asked the doc­tor not to tell her, but we can’t do any­thing against his moral oblig­a­tion to inform the patient. Either way, she does­n’t know how seri­ous it is, whether it’s from shock and denial, or mem­o­ry loss.

But she’s awake, and aware, and feel­ing no pain, which is good enough for me. The most we can do now is to try to make the rest of her life as enjoy­able as pos­si­ble.

She thinks she’s going to be fine. Keeps telling me that she’ll take me to a near­by park when she’s bet­ter. As much as it hurts me to know this won’t be pos­si­ble any­more, it’s reliev­ing to know she’s so obliv­i­ous. We don’t let our­selves cry around her, for fear that she may real­ize how bad it is.

Her face is more sal­low, her fin­gers and legs ema­ci­at­ed, but she still has her thick, black hair1. Aside from a dis­tend­ed stom­ach, it’s hard to tell that she has such a grim prog­no­sis.

But by far the hard­est part is hav­ing to cod­dle her like a child to take her med­ica­tion. Telling her she’s a good girl if she swal­lows her pills and reward­ing her with ice-cream. That we’re only strict because we care about her. It tears me in half when she gives such a painful look of dis­taste with every pill we hand her, 18 a day.

She used to be so strong. Now we have to be strong for her.

  1. “I used to have even more”, she tells me. [↩]

Walks With Grandma

walks down the street

Thumbnail: School alley
Thumbnail: Building roads
Thumbnail: Convenience store
Thumbnail: Foliage
Thumbnail: Neon sign
Thumbnail: Store parrots
Thumbnail: Parrots
Thumbnail: Schoolgirls
Thumbnail: Villas sign
Thumbnail: Holding hands
 

In the last few weeks, she’s been too weak to leave the house, but we can take her for walks in the after­noon now. Going around the block takes half an hour and leaves her legs shak­ing, but she’s hap­py to be out. Before we go, she gets dressed and puts on her make­up and does her hair. Even now, she retains the class and dig­ni­ty I’ve always admired in her.

The Worth Of A Good Night's Sleep

My aunt — the youngest child of my grand­moth­er — has been here for weeks. She stopped tak­ing her clients at work, and has been over­see­ing my grand­moth­er’s treat­ments, as well as mak­ing deci­sions on her behalf.

They sleep in the same bed now, which I think is adorable, like regress­ing to some child­hood time, except the roles have been reversed. Yesterday, she told me my grand­moth­er had the best the night of sleep in a long time. She attrib­ut­es it to my grand­moth­er’s hap­pi­ness that my dad and I are here.

This has already made the entire trip worth it.

Last Chance For Grandma

I’m on a plane some­where over the Pacific Ocean, in the mid­dle of this 16000km jour­ney. 18 hours of flight time, one lay­over in Chicago, and two meals.

My grand­moth­er in Hong Kong is dying. She’s been diag­nosed with colon can­cer, and start­ed chemother­a­py last week, slip­ping in and out of aware­ness due to the can­cer, the treat­ment, the med­ica­tions, or all three. So when my dad told me a few days ago that he was book­ing a tick­et to fly out to see her, I had to take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go with him.

This is the woman to whom I mailed the first pay­cheque from my first job. The woman who gave me the jade neck­lace I nev­er take off. The woman who came to Canada by her­self to find an edu­ca­tion for my dad, when the only English word she knew was “delay”. The woman who taught me how to hold chop­sticks prop­er­ly. The woman I’ve looked up to my entire life.

I don’t know how I’ll react when I see her, because I don’t know what con­di­tion she’s in. The details have been vague.

Awareness is a big thing. I want to be there. I want her to be aware. I want her to know how impor­tant she is to me.

The cir­cum­stances aren’t great, but I’m thank­ful to have this oppor­tu­ni­ty to go. I’ll be able to bond with my dad. I’ll get a chance to see my uncles and aunts and cousins. I was going to go last year, but the trip was can­celed due to unfore­seen cir­cum­stances.

In a way, the tim­ing is right. I already have my pass­port. I was able to get more than three weeks off work. My col­i­tis has been diag­nosed, and I’m tak­ing med­ica­tion that will allow me to eat very well and not wor­ry1. I have all the cam­era gear I need2. And I’ve been feel­ing so jad­ed with life late­ly, it’ll be good to get away, a lit­tle bit of much need­ed exile.

Before dri­ving to Toronto, I dropped Dolly off at Joel’s house3 The fish has a delayed feed­ing tablet. Extra pre­scrip­tions have been filled. The plants have been watered. Projects have been put on hold, both paid and unpaid, and plans have been can­celed. Even Naveed called me dur­ing the dri­ve, and invit­ed me to Rosella’s first birth­day par­ty, but I’ll have to miss it. I don’t like to do things so last minute, but I have no choice.

This will be the first time I’ve ever gone when it was­n’t Christmas. It’ll be warmer, that’s for sure, and I’m going from a bru­tal Canadian win­ter to rel­a­tive­ly trop­i­cal climes.

As a woman in her 80s4 with such a diag­no­sis on a dif­fer­ent con­ti­nent, it’ll prob­a­bly be the last chance for me to see her.

It feels like soon isn’t soon enough.

  1. I have yet to cal­cu­late the adjust­ment for the tim­ing of my med­ica­tions, since Hong Kong is 13 hours ahead, and the dosage for one of them is care­ful­ly tapered over sev­er­al weeks. [↩]
  2. The last time I went to Hong Kong, I was­n’t into pho­tog­ra­phy yet, so I bor­rowed my dad’s cam­era and did­n’t know how to use it. [↩]
  3. He owes me a favour for tak­ing care of Sprocket for six weeks while he was in Australia last year. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how she han­dles liv­ing in some­one else’s home, along with Sprocket and anoth­er dog. [↩]
  4. No one real­ly knows how old she is, because they did­n’t keep birth records in Hong Kong for girls when she was born. I’m guess­ing some­where around late 80s. She just tells every­one that her birth­day is on Christmas to make it eas­i­er. [↩]

Father-Son Bonding

I called my dad on his birth­day this week. After the divorce I would nev­er call him, spe­cial occa­sion or not, sim­ply because I need­ed to dis­tance myself from the sit­u­a­tion. He did call me on mine last year though, which reestab­lish­es a sort of prece­dence and rit­u­al, and he actu­al­ly thanked me for the call.

We made the usu­al small talk, about work and home.

Mercedes Benz SLK 55 AMG 2006

He told me he bought a car: a 2006 Mercedes Benz SLK 55 AMG hard-top con­vert­ible with 18″ rims and 7‑speed-auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion. He’s going to keep the Beemer for win­ter dri­ving. It filled my heart with qui­et joy when he said I could dri­ve it the next time I vis­it­ed him. Not so much because he was let­ting me (for I was always allowed to dri­ve the Sportline 300CE while liv­ing at home), but because I could tell in his voice that he want­ed me to try it.

I asked him if there’s any his­to­ry of col­orec­tal can­cer in the fam­i­ly, which the doc­tor want­ed to know at my last appoint­ment, to which my dad answered, thank­ful­ly, no. He shared with me his own health con­cerns, the med­ical terms of which he only knows in Chinese. These are things I avoid ask­ing about when I vis­it him, as he pops some pills from a bot­tle kept with the dish­es in the kitchen, and I real­ize that I’m learn­ing more about my dad than ever. It’s not so much out of a need for pri­va­cy or avoid­ance of embar­rass­ment, but sim­ply out of con­ve­nience, as these top­ics would nev­er get brought up.

It’s strange to bond with him in this way, only after so many years of leav­ing home.

I remem­ber him try­ing to teach me pho­tog­ra­phy when I was younger, but he soon lost inter­est, in both pho­tog­ra­phy and me1. Maybe it’s the dis­tance that makes us appre­ci­ate each oth­er more, and it would­n’t be the same if we lived in the same city.

In a way, I’m glad to have the rela­tion­ship now, and I’m able to for­get that I’ve nev­er had it for most of my life.

  1. As such, all my pho­tog­ra­phy is self-taught, aside from one trick used to zoom a lens towards the sub­ject so that the edges are blurred that he showed me at the Statue of Liberty. [↩]