Chapter 59

It was a sunny day a few days after my graduation recital. I was settling into a new residence on Columbia street by myself after moving out of the place LP and I had lived at for a year. I was kind of sad that he wasn’t around anymore. I mean, why wouldn’t I be? We lived together and studied together for 4 years straight, including most summers. That’s quite a lot of time together.

On the acceptance email, there was a link to a facebook group of all the accepted students for the coming year and in that class, there were only strangers. I kind of got worried. All my undergrad friends had graduated and gone to their own future career paths. Here I was, continuing my education. 

I was glad I still had the UW Breakers on my side but to be honest, the club was going through a rough patch at this point due to the steadily decreasing numbers throughout the years. The once vibrant scene has now become a desolate and scarce landscape with only a few faces to keep the spirit going. Even then, it was the only hobby I had that was likely to survive the next four years. Acapella and UW Orchestra were now too heavily time-commitment wise to be continued. I worried that my support network was crumbling apart. 

As I got lost in thought about how sad it was that I was now alone, I got a call from mom.

“Grandma passed and I am in shock. I don’t know what is going on but apparently she was struck by a car and I am freaking out.”

She then started to ramble on about the situation for another 5 – 10 minutes. There was no new information that was coming over the phone, it was the same information now just on repeat. Mom just kept repeating “I’m in shock, I’m in shock”. Then, she went into extreme detail regarding everything she was doing and how her day went before she got the call from the police. This seemed to be useless information so I went ahead and stopped her ramblings. I don’t know why I reacted this way but what did I do when I heard all this information spewed to me? I lashed out in anger. 

“Stop talking mom! Pull yourself together. Stop blabbering like an idiot.”

In hindsight, I may have been in a bit of shock myself. But that doesn’t really excuse the fact that I was kind of mean to my mother who had recently gone through an actual shocking event. Catching myself, I told mom to keep it together and continue talking with the police. I was about to offer to come back home to calm her down but then I stopped. What could’ve I done? The damage has already been done and there was nothing else left to do. 

My mom then said she’ll call me back later when she hears more about what the police have to say. I wish I could tell you about how everything got better after we’ve both got a bit of time to think things over but that was not true. The opposite happened. The delicate relationship with my mom and I had seemed like it was only positive and functional when I was happy. When things went unexpectedly, it seems the relationship breaks down easily. We had a fragile bond. I think the main issue I had with this dynamic stemmed from the fact that I really hated it when mom tried to play the victim card or showed any signs of weakness. 

When I was younger, my mom would scold me for pretty much everything. Whenever I didn’t do my homework or didn’t seem like I was studying enough, she would yell at me with extreme emotion. It scared me straight and worked to make me work hard. She has always made it seem like any task I had was a testament of will and that I was always a failure of sorts for not meeting the demands. While this was successful at making me as successful as I would eventually become, it did nothing to make me feel sympathetic towards mom. You see, the thing that mom never taught me to be was a good person. Her zero sympathy for failure in school eventually led me to have zero sympathy for her. I only cared about responsibility. I had to be responsible with my homework and future, and she had to be responsible for making sure we had a roof over our heads. We literally never talked about any feelings of any kind. Whenever I felt like I couldn’t do something, she would tell me to just suck it up. Whenever I went through something that made me feel taken back, she would give me distance. We never spoke about ideas or anything related to our dreams. We only talked about survival. 

Therefore, when she showed weakness, I couldn’t respond with anything but hatred for it. My brain had been conditioned with an image of my mom always telling me how hard she was working and how successful she was trying to be for the both of us that when she actually seemed down, it seemed like a slap in my face. For my entire life she’s said she tries her hardest and that I should also try my hardest at everything. We had to always be strong, never weak. Since I was raised with a mindset that there was no room for any type of weakness, why does she think it’s okay for her to show weakness now? 

Grandma passing away, as it turns out, was the first time I realized that my mom and I’s relationship was built wrong. Families should want to be together when death happens. In my case though, something like this happening only made me feel burdened and wanting to stay away from it all. In my mind, I wasn’t thinking about grandma at all, I was thinking about how much time will this cost me to arrange her funeral. A part of me knew I should be more sympathetic to the passing of my grandma but I really couldn’t. I simply didn’t really care. 

Not having any good memories for grandma outside that one time she gave me some extra cash when I was traveling to New York for a trip meant that I had a grand total of one good memory with her. This was not a lot to get the tear ducts going during her funeral. Furthermore, seeing my mom treat my grandma with anger and antagonistic tones constantly also instilled upon me a lesson. The lesson was that hanging around with family as they get old will only yield horrible mental health results on both sides.

The other layer beyond what I was conscious of was that almost every waking moment when I was with mom and grandma, all they did was argue. I’ve seen my mom pissed off, angry and downright suicidal whenever she spoke with grandma. Grandma and I had a good relationship though I’d be lying if I said we understood each other well. In truth, we interacted very little. Which was probably one of the only reasons why we had such a good relationship. 

Unconsciously, during the entirety of everything involved with grandma’s passing, my feeling was always that mom was lying about how sad she truly was. I mean, how can someone claim they miss the departed when during the departed’s lifetime, all they did was argue with them? I know family was family but what the hell? It’s an irrefutable fact that my mom’s mental health was much better with grandma gone. I knew she knew this too. 

I suppose this was probably the main reason why when I first heard mom talk about grandma’s passing, that I got angry. Mom, with her constant repetitions of “I’m in shock, I’m in shock”, simply didn’t fit right. It seemed like she was trying to convince me that she was sad or distraught over the passing of grandma. In my mind, what was going on was I was thinking how mom was using grandma’s death to garner attention. 

Trying to garner attention for yourself from our family when grandma passed? That’s in poor taste. 

It also shattered the illusion of a healthy family that had been falsely built from my success at getting into Optometry school. I knew it truthfully then, it was impossible to have a good relationship with my mom and dad. My parents simply didn’t have the foundation to a long lasting and healthy relationship to develop. 

I knew it then. When my mom passes in the future, I know there could only be two types of relationships we’d have. One where I resent her but still have her in my life. Or one where we are on good terms but are very distant. There was no sustainable future where I was happy and would still contact my mom often.