Saturday, September 27, 2003
had a mini-movie marathon last night in my floormate liz's room. watched fantasia 2000 then lilo and stitch, was really sleepy after that. fantasia 2000 was wonderful (love rhapsody in blue!), but it was also perfect bedtime music. was really planning to use friday night to study, but after we finished with the movies it was 11 pm already, stayed up another hour to finish reading king richard II for my shakespeare class, then gladly fell into bed. this morning i got up and made sure i finished my essay before logging on to trillian...i can never get any work done when i'm chatting, so i decided to discipline myself...self-control girl! of course i turned trillian on as soon as i finished my essay...and learnt a new bahasa phrase courtesy of li-en...saya tidak ada punya pacar...i do not have a boyfriend, ha, useful phrase to know.
my mom mailed me while she was waiting to take my grandma to the hospital. grandma's been having a fever for the past few days and a doctor friend of my uncle took a look at her and said the prognosis is not good...the infection has entered her bloodstream. she seems to be breathless, gasping away, and moaning...does this mean the end is near? grown so used to the idea that she'll always be around, ever since i was young she was the "presence" in the house, someone who was there but i never really knew. we even always joke that grandma will outlive us all, till we almost believe it. at some points of my life i resented her because she took so much of my mom's time and attention, because she prevented my mom from grabbing on to many opportunities to further herself, get away, have a little bit of fun. think this period must be really tough for my mom...it's hard to let go of your mother, even when she hasn't been around in spirit for the last almost 20 years anyway. i look at my grandma and see only an old lady lost in her own world. mom looks at grandma, and sees the woman she used to be, the fierce, feisty woman who was never daunted by the challenges of the world. what the outside world wasn't strong enough to do, grandma's internal world finally succeeded in...getting her down, rendering her out of action. sometimes deep inside of me i think maybe grandma is better off gone, because what kind of life is she living now anyway? and then i feel guilty, because what kind of respectable person wants her grandma dead? and because i feel that isn't what my mom would want...even now, i think i am grieved by grandma's sickness not because she is suffering, but because my mom is. does that make me unfeeling?
old age, sickness, ugly things we cannot run away from...is everything really a chasing after the wind? better take seriously the teacher's words to "remember your Creator in the days of your youth".
i hear all these stories about grandma and the wonderful things she used to do, she could cook the most amazing dishes, do cross-stitch without a pattern book, raise 8 kids who all turned out wonderfully intelligent and well-adjusted. she sounds like someone i would have liked to know, if i were given the chance. all she is to me now is the lady who grew younger and younger, even as she grew older. as i grew up, she lost the ability to walk, to feed herself, to talk...in a sense we've been watching her die day by day...painful, long, drawn-out way to go.
Grandma can't talk
She just stares into space
But I wonder what's hiding
Behind that blank gaze
My mother and aunts
Pass down stories of old
But I wonder if something's changed
In the way they are told
I wonder if Grandma
Still had a say
Would she have told things
In a different way?
I can only imagine
The way things would be
If I had heard those stories
At my grandmother's knee
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my mom mailed me while she was waiting to take my grandma to the hospital. grandma's been having a fever for the past few days and a doctor friend of my uncle took a look at her and said the prognosis is not good...the infection has entered her bloodstream. she seems to be breathless, gasping away, and moaning...does this mean the end is near? grown so used to the idea that she'll always be around, ever since i was young she was the "presence" in the house, someone who was there but i never really knew. we even always joke that grandma will outlive us all, till we almost believe it. at some points of my life i resented her because she took so much of my mom's time and attention, because she prevented my mom from grabbing on to many opportunities to further herself, get away, have a little bit of fun. think this period must be really tough for my mom...it's hard to let go of your mother, even when she hasn't been around in spirit for the last almost 20 years anyway. i look at my grandma and see only an old lady lost in her own world. mom looks at grandma, and sees the woman she used to be, the fierce, feisty woman who was never daunted by the challenges of the world. what the outside world wasn't strong enough to do, grandma's internal world finally succeeded in...getting her down, rendering her out of action. sometimes deep inside of me i think maybe grandma is better off gone, because what kind of life is she living now anyway? and then i feel guilty, because what kind of respectable person wants her grandma dead? and because i feel that isn't what my mom would want...even now, i think i am grieved by grandma's sickness not because she is suffering, but because my mom is. does that make me unfeeling?
old age, sickness, ugly things we cannot run away from...is everything really a chasing after the wind? better take seriously the teacher's words to "remember your Creator in the days of your youth".
i hear all these stories about grandma and the wonderful things she used to do, she could cook the most amazing dishes, do cross-stitch without a pattern book, raise 8 kids who all turned out wonderfully intelligent and well-adjusted. she sounds like someone i would have liked to know, if i were given the chance. all she is to me now is the lady who grew younger and younger, even as she grew older. as i grew up, she lost the ability to walk, to feed herself, to talk...in a sense we've been watching her die day by day...painful, long, drawn-out way to go.
Grandma can't talk
She just stares into space
But I wonder what's hiding
Behind that blank gaze
My mother and aunts
Pass down stories of old
But I wonder if something's changed
In the way they are told
I wonder if Grandma
Still had a say
Would she have told things
In a different way?
I can only imagine
The way things would be
If I had heard those stories
At my grandmother's knee
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