Ode to my 婆婆

It's been hard for me to talk about this in person so I have to just write it and get it out there.

My maternal grandmother passed away a week from today. Her physical and mental health had been deteriorating for the past few years but she was still always smiles until earlier this year when she had to move into a nursing home and then another nursing home. I knew she would be leaving us soon after because there really wasn't any getting better from the stage she was at, but a certain nurse, or murse I should say, at the Live Oak Rehabilitation Center in San Gabriel, California, didn't keep her head elevated like she was supposed to be so the food in her stomach leaked into her lungs. This led to her choking on it, which led to her final stay in the ICU, because the liquid in her lungs wasn't allowing her to breathe full breaths and she had to be on life support. Not only that, this particular nursing home refuses to admit that they had done anything wrong and also refuses to admit that certain murse had done it, but my mom knows who did it and I hope he's ashamed of himself. She was only my last living grandparent. No big.

Anyway, I really miss her. It still hurts to think about how hard she was struggling to breathe when I last saw her and held her hand, how I watched her for about four hours right after they took her off life support two Mondays ago, worried that each cough was her last breath and ready to spring up to call the nurse over to help her. It hurt to see her so confused about what was happening and why she had all these tubes coming out of her. We were all so happy last Saturday because she actually got a lot better over the course of the week and they were going to transfer her back to a nursing home, not the same one, of course, and then, just seven hours after my mom told me that, she passed away on Halloween. My sis and I took a stroll down memory lane by visiting places we used to go to with her and my grandpa in Chinatown when we were kids. They really liked to go to watch Chinese opera at this retirement home there (that tall building with the pink shutters) but we'd always stop for a bowl of wonton noodles at the Sam Woo there and then walk around the plazas beforehand. Afterward I would fall asleep as they watched their operas.

I interviewed her for a class project my freshman year of college. I learned a lot that I probably never would have found out otherwise. She told me about her education as a kid and how she used to be bad and steal money from the tin that her dad would hide his money in at his store to buy snacks. She also made sure to mention how she was very pretty. I didn't know her before she was my grandma, obviously, but from what I've witnessed and from everything I hear from her children, she has always been quite a character.

For one thing, she has always resisted speaking anything but her local dialect. She spoke this dialect called 厚街話 (houjie hua), which is similar to what they speak in Dongguan. I learned to understand it from her and she'd been in my life so long that I didn't realize it wasn't the same Cantonese I spoke until much later. To this day, pretty much all my relatives don't realize I understand it but I do so stop talking smack! Anyway, she had a really nice Mandarin-speaking doctor, who is now our entire family's doctor, whom she loved and would talk to in her dialect. My mom or my aunt was always there translating but I think she actually thought the doctor could understand her since she herself did not understand Mandarin and didn't realize translating needed to be done.

There was this one time I was at a market with her and this little Hispanic girl sitting in a shopping cart kept staring at her. I said to my grandma that this little girl was staring at her, thinking it was kind of funny, and she shrugged it off. After a while, she stared back and started talking to her in her language, "What are you looking at? What?" It was hilarious and not a rare occurrence. She also had a potty mouth and was prone to calling everyone "stupid kid," regardless of who they were, if she didn't like something they did. She called me that often, but I could tell she really cared about me and the rest of my family by the way she would make sure to remember things we liked.

My earliest memory of her is when I first met her in China at the age of three. All I know is that I was at her house eating the most awesome 排骨 (riblets steamed in delicious black bean sauce) with a spoon and she was sitting on one of those round stools with the plastered-on wood pattern around a square table of the same pattern and she had a couple crazy silver teeth. She then immigrated to the States when I was still really young. Some of the memories that stand out most are the times when I used to sit with her in her bedroom at our house in Rosemead and she would take out a small knife from her wooden drawers that are now in my sister's room and cut up apples and Asian pears. She would talk to me while doing so yet still be able to cut the fruit and de-core it with such precision. It was crazay! Oh yeah and in that same room that she at one point shared with my sis, she made her take down a poster of Aaron Kwok because "he was staring at her" and she didn't like it, but cat posters were okay. According to my mom, I apparently inherited irrational fears from her..

She was there to take care of me so I didn't have to be sent to a babysitter anymore, not that I have any recollection of that. She let me sit and eat (and choke on one time) gummy bears to my heart's content while watching the Disney Channel. She taught me how to fry eggs in a wok. And then it was onto Top Ramen and then, at first, boiling hotdogs in a wok but soon after it was frying hotdogs. My skills did not develop much further beyond that but I try.

The funeral was last week on Thursday, traditional Chinese. My sister said she liked doing the family bowing thing because it makes her feel like she's in a Young and Dangerous movie. It does kind of feel like that.. Because my grandma's a gangstaaa. :D We also learned to fold gold and silver ingots out of the money we burn. I feel like it was all a really nice way to honor her and ensure that she makes it safely to and stays happy on the other side, wherever that may be. She's off in her best clothes and jewelry and her favorite hat. We had a huge procession for her on the way to Rose Hills. I think she would've liked it.

By the way, Chinese rites regarding death are super interesting. My sis tried to read up on them and got scared. I'm going to try to too but not make the same mistake of reading before I sleep.

I miss my 婆婆. She lived a happy, long life, and even got to meet her great granddaughter. Hopefully I will tear up less and less whenever I look at her pictures because she's not suffering anymore and prolonging her stay here would've been selfish. I'll see her again someday.