In this new modern age, I got to connect with my mother on MSN today. The wedding has brought up a lot of performance anxieties for her. After spending her last few years at toastmasters, she takes public speaking very seriously.
Random discussions led to talk of life insurance, led to talk of real estate, led to talk of cemetery plots. It was actually a light-hearted discussion…really…about where she might like to be buried. Back home in Macau by her mother or here in Toronto where the grandkids and I can visit.
I’ve always had this very lonely vision of the women in my family. My maternal grandmother passed away almost a decade ago. I think my mother, as the only daughter amongst 6 siblings, misses her the most. My other uncles speeak of her as well, but they don’t talk about her like a person, the way my mother does. The men speak of her as the revered maternal figure, but my mother talks about all her quirkiness. She understood my grandmother’s woes and hidden pain, even the hidden agendas to all her well-laid plans.
She has always wished she was with her during her last few dying months. She has always wondered if she was in the same country as her, could she have taken better care of her? Caught her cancer earlier? Do more to save her? At least she could have been there for her amongst the men so she could have someone to connect with…
I know all this in the way my mother has passed on her own things to me, especially my grandmother’s things. She has a very clear vision of her mortality, because her own mother passed too soon in her eyes.
She gave me my grandmother’s longest strand of pearls with a note. In Chinese culture, pearls represents how precious a daughter is to a parent. My mom posited that because my grandmother never knew her own parents, she always collected pearls to compensate for that lack of love, and hoped that her own daughter would never feel the same neglect.
My mother would never admit it, but she’s gotten very introspective and self-aware since her divorce. She is a very independent woman and she’s very proud of that, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t get lonely. Her last long term bf never fulfilled her life, he was just a staple in her every day. I no longer lived with her so she didn’t have a purpose anymore. While she had brothers, they all lived oceans away and most days, they felt more like a responsibility than someone she could share her burdens with.
In the same way she did about her mother, I worry about her the most. I hate the idea of her living alone, with no family to come home to. I don’t want ever want to be the last to know if my mother’s sick. As her closest family member, I don’t ever want her to feel lonely – the way she worried my grandmother might have felt. More importantly,
I don’t ever want her to feel unloved.
That’s why even in our silly discussions about her burial, she wants to make sure that her future grandkids and I could visit. She wants me to move her ashes and take her with me if we ever move to a different city so we can always visit… She wants to be remembered and cherished in the the same way she always kept a picture of my grandmother up, not out of obligation but out of the loss she feels in her heart.
I hope my grandmother knows just how much my mother misses her and how often she thinks of her, in the same way that I hope my mother never feels alone or unloved in this world because I will always think of her, care for her, and love her.
