Chapter 60

On Friday August 5th, 2016 at around 12PM, an SUV struck an elderly woman in North York’s Willowdale area. The paramedics were called immediately and the pedestrian was sent to the trauma center. After a short while, she was pronounced dead. 

This was the information I got from the police a few days after the phone call that mom gave me. The SUV had hit my grandma as she was crossing the street on that sunny day. Initially saddened by this, I quickly got curious right afterwards. How did my grandma, despite the fact that she was jaywalking a bit, not get seen by the SUV? Grandma had crossed the road between two traffic lights. It was a calm neighborhood all things considered and she wasn’t going very fast. So how did the SUV not pick anything up? This question kind of bugged me though in the end, I never truly dug much deeper. I had to help out with the funeral.

A few days later this all happened, mom had set up a service and cremation with the closest funeral home around. A few days prior to the ceremony, my uncle and cousins all flew over from Vancouver and visited us. They helped us with the throwing away of all of grandma’s stuff. Most of it was clothes for which we donated to local charities. While my extended family was over, it was then that mom let everyone know a secret. Grandma was diagnosed with leukemia a few months ago prior to her accident. 

This was a bit of a surprise but to be honest, my grandma did have regular visits with the family doctor recently and it wasn’t that much of a surprise for anyone. The only information I was told was when some doctor said her white blood cell count was a little high a few months ago. In some sense, the fact that grandma passed away in this manner was a blessing. She wouldn’t need to suffer through chemo at all. 

When the date of the reception happened, it turned out to be more full than I expected. I never realized how many things happened while I was in university. Grandma, as it turns out, enjoyed quite an active life and participated in her fair share of senior’s groups. This included being in a painting club for the elderly and also a singing choir. Furthermore, while she wasn’t religious, some buddhists friends of hers from a local temple nearby decided to drop by to bless her and send her off with a prayer of good passing. It was a surprising addition to the ceremonies to say the least. 

Soon after that, my mom and uncle would take the stage to say a few things about grandma. I never said anything at all nor was I given a chance but that was okay. Though grandma always said I was her favorite, in truth I had probably the least amount of time spent with her. To be more honest, most of the time I’d known grandma, she had really only been known as the main antagonist to mom’s arguments. Hence, when the family started to tear up on stage, I felt bad that I wasn’t really sad. 

In my mind, this was probably the best thing that could have happened to her. She knew she was dying from leukemia and she was almost 88 years old when she passed. Not only did she avoid all the chemo stuff but she lived pretty much the average lifespan of someone in Canada. This was a full life she lived. Even a few years ago, though it was taboo to discuss in mom’s eyes, I always wondered how she would go. She was getting there in age and I figured the best thing was to be realistic about it. I tried bringing the subject up to mom. I asked her if she knew how grandma wanted to go. Did she want cremation? Or a burial? Did she want her ashes spread somewhere specific? It was all valid questions in my eyes. But my mom scolded me for even asking. I think we had a difference in opinion on death.

I was disillusioned about death when I was young. How so? Well, on a random day in middle school, my mom had pulled me aside after I had not done well in another test. She yelled at me the normal amount and then proceeded to ask me how I would function if she wasn’t going to be around anymore. She then said that I can’t expect her to be there all the time. I had to work on myself to be able to take care of myself. I think she was doing what she normally does. One half trying to force me to be more responsible with my studies or my lifestyle with her questionable mind games, and one half trying to garner sympathy for herself. 

What happened after this was not something I forgot easily. I kept thinking about a world without her. That was when it first happened, the seed of independence. I started to form the idea in my heart that I can not have her as a source of stability in my life. This is probably one of the things that fed into me being so selfish. I had to take care of myself because my mom may not be able to care for me. It’s not really an excuse but a simple fact. When you grow up in a single parent household, you gotta look after yourself. 

Now, for those who kept track of everything, you’d know that in the years that followed when I transformed from a middle school student to a high school student, the relationship between mom and I would get worse. I’d go through the whole resentment thing from mom siding with CC more and more, and then I’d go through with mom choosing dad over me at the end of highschool as well. These events, unconsciously, had given me a clear mind to what needed to be done should mom pass away. I would really understand this until the funeral but thinking on this fact during the funeral, I realized that if this were my mom’s funeral, I’m not sure I’d be that sad at all. In fact, I may think it was just a pain due to all the planning. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want my mom to die or anything but, should that happen, I think I’d know how to move on. I mean, she did want me to support myself in a way that I didn’t have to depend on her. 

Anyhow, my mom said a lot of things while she was on stage. In the middle of her speech, she broke down and cried for a bit and had to take a break. I felt worse then. Not because I was sad to see my mom cry, but because seeing my mom cry did not elicit anything in me in response. To me, I actually was more surprised than anything. I didn’t think my mom was capable of crying. Then I thought more about this and a question came to my mind. If this were my funeral, would my mom cry for me? Mom hadn’t really raised me. She deserves some credit but I’d say it was mostly due to the basics of survival she provided. Grandma definitely raised mom though. Grandma had taken care of mom since the beginning and unlike my high education, which I needed a loan for, my mom had her entire university and career life funded by grandma alone. In my heart I felt that mom was crying for that purpose. Grandma had given mom so much in her lifetime. But then I quickly caught myself. Maybe I’ve become too cynical but I didn’t buy it. 

I have only seen mom and grandma talk and then yell. I have never seen them on good terms and have always wondered why my mom even forces herself to be around grandma. It was bad for her mental health and probably grandma’s too. My mom’s mental health would drastically improve after grandma not being around anymore and furthermore, grandma had never been a good aspect of our lives. 

If I had to say it plainly, I’d say grandma’s presence in our lives did two things. First, it made mom ease her own guilt. She had owed grandma quite a lot of money from her upbringing afterall and this was her way of saying to herself that she is trying to make grandma’s last years better. Second, it was a way to prevent my mom from getting lonely. I knew I couldn’t stay with mom when I got older and I think she knew this as well. Not only did she know that I knew she and I were not going to function well together, I also vowed at some point to never repeat the mistakes my mom made. I would not allow her to move in with me and cause arguments with every conversation like she had with grandma and herself. This was good for no one.

This was not a lot of things to cry over. So why did I think my mom was crying? Because it would look bad if she didn’t. I think she cared about her ego more than anything else and crying at a funeral was just the human thing to do. Regardless, I never interrupted or anything. It really wasn’t my place. All I did was try to be respectful on the sidelines and avoided telling my opinion about everything. I wasn’t sad but I knew that if my family was sad, this was no time to stir up anything. 

After my mom’s speech, the service went on and we eventually found ourselves talking with all of our friends who attended the funeral. My family was mostly in tears. My uncle and aunty were absolutely devastated as they talked with our friends. I think I even saw my cousins shed a few tears. I, on the other hand, wasn’t even wet in my eyes. I felt like an outsider. Was this because I knew grandma the least? Was this because I was completely spoiled and treated her death as nothing but a relief from the care and stress my mom will now go through? Had I simply seen grandma in a horrible light in her arguments with mom for too long? Maybe there was something wrong with me. I treated her death almost exclusively as a math equation and found nothing but benefit on the other end. Seeing as how I could not offer emotional support to my extended family nor mom, I decided to keep busy with what I can do. By this I meant that I helped clean up after the ceremony and collect all the letters. Following that, since I was in the best state of mind out of everyone, I drove mom to the crematorium where we said our last farewell to grandma. 

Staring at the casket right before it would be let into the crematory, there was one last farewell to grandma from everyone. This time, we got to go to her one on one and speak our last words. When it was my turn, I went up to her and stared at her face. It was old, and very veiny. It also looked quite peaceful. I think we should have tipped the embalmer for how good of a job they did. During this time, I couldn’t say anything. I wasn’t choked up or anything, I simply didn’t know what to say. I figured I should give some sort of gesture to all of this and decided on the generic act of putting a flower in the casket. Then I backed off and let the rest of the scheduling resume. 

With the passage of time, I find myself thinking back often to my time with grandma. It was annoying and often overshadowed by my mom’s constant pestering with everything but it wasn’t all negative. As I mentioned in the past, there was still a good memory there of when grandma gave me money before one of my trips thinking this was the best thing she could do for me. In my head, I chose to remember her that way. 

I don’t believe there’s anything spiritual about dying but if there’s some type of karma in the universe then I think in the end, grandma still went on the other side as a net positive. In a purely financial and mathematical standpoint, grandma has done everything for her family in her lifetime to her best ability and gave us everything. I wish I could say that mom helped move this tradition onwards but that would be lying. 

With the hindsight of someone in the future, I am happy to say that I do cherish my grandma a lot more now, almost a decade later. I’ve also come to respect the life she had now that I’ve come to know what living is like when you’re not a teenager. Her history of having barely enough to eat during the cultural revolution of China to becoming a single mom right after the death of my grandpa to colon cancer during my mom’s youth, her having also endured living through seeing her wealth be stolen by my dad after trying to pass it on to me. That must have been quite the mental toll and that’s not even mentioning the fact that she had to live through seeing my mom still choose my dad over herself and me after the fact. That’s rough. In truth, it probably shaped her existence with mom and I am now of the decision that it was not her fault. 

In the end, her legacy was one that I’m happy to include in the lore of my family’s history. As I get older and older, I find myself growing more and more at the resilience of my grandma’s life. She’s done her job well for her family. 

With that, I think I finally found my last words to say to grandma. 

“Thank you for everything.”