when you coming home?

Wednesday, July 09, 2008 | 00:32

“… son, i don’t know when”
-cat stevens

my parents have been in asia, slated to come back tomorrow.  i haven’t heard from them in a week or two so i emailed my father jokingly the other day, “are you alive?”.  he responded this evening with the reply, “i’m alive.  grandma passed away today”.  all of a sudden my playfulness did not seem so funny.

grandma was as old as dirt.  95, maybe 96, years old?  it was bound to happen sometime, but if you saw the woman you wouldn’t think so.  she was hit by a motorcycle 3 years ago and had to undergo brain surgery.  a woman in her 90s… with her brain open… and when all was said and done she was as sharp and as bitchy as ever.

my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer back in 1996.  my dad says he didn’t tell anyone and insisted on coming to the States.  the first and only time he ever visited was back in 1985, when his youngest son had just bought his own house and had a beautiful 2-year old boy that he had never met.  i’m told i was pretty mean to my grandparents their first visit.  despite this fact, 10 years later he knew his time was up and my dad says he crossed the Pacific just to see me.  he died a few weeks later when he got back to Taiwan.

it was only after they went back that we found out that he had liver cancer.  grandma didn’t know this until a couple of years ago.  they had kept it from her.  it all seems rather poetic, or at least it helps me to think it is.  my father, the youngest son and the only one who moved away from home, was back for the longest amount of time since he left almost 30 years ago.  it seemed the pain of him leaving this one last time was too much for grandma to bear so she up and left a day before they could even say goodbye.

i just realized i cried on to my trackpad. there’s a salt flat puddle where i’m trying to navigate.  it is a difficult thing to believe in hell and when you’re faced with mortality you wonder if you really believe it.  at the very least you know you don’t want to believe it.  i visited grandma last year and we more or less knew it was the last time.  one day she pulled me aside when everyone else was out in the courtyard talking and told me what to do when she was gone.  i was to take care of mom and dad, and i had to come back and visit my cousins and aunts and uncles.  she said i had to visit them because she knew i wouldn’t come back once she was gone.  then she cried.  i wanted to tell her that Jesus loved her and what i believed, but i couldn’t do it to the old lady.  instead i just hugged her and said “i love you, grandma”.

rest in peace, grandma.

posted in life