the light in an unused room
when my grandmother was rushed to the hospital on the 16th of june in 2021, her last day on earth, my dad told me to not turn the light off in her room.
when i asked him why, he said that it was a sign that we were still waiting for her to come back.
it’s a superstition, he says—one where we leave a light on as a sign that we are still waiting for her to come home; that her room is still hers.
a house with a light is one that is occupied; that is home to people. a house without a light is abandoned, with no one to care for it.
she never did come home.
i learned from her caregiver that she’d handed my aunt, her youngest daughter, the house keys that she so tightly held onto a few weeks before her death.
i’m forgetful now, so you have to take care of it.
mom says it should have been a sign. my aunt refuses to accept this point of view, even today.
on her last night, she’d told my aunt that she was going on a walk. one where she didn’t have to wear her oxygen, or have a caregiver, or use her cane. my aunt had said okay, that she can go wherever now that she had a portable oxygenator. grandma laughed, saying she won’t need one anymore.
i’ll just walk right out the gate.
her heart stopped beating when the stretcher left our house’s green gate. not once was her heart restarted in the ambulance.
i remember not believing she was dead, the same way i refused to believe my a-ma1, who had passed just almost three months earlier, had died. i went about my life ordinarily. ate my breakfast, double checked my appointment with the ophthalmologist, emailed my professor that i was going to miss class, and then asked my mom when they were all coming home. it was a parallel to how i coped with my a-ma’s death in march, how i left the group call after the doctor announced her time of death and went down to eat breakfast, my supposedly sweet cream bun tasting like sand in my mouth; my usual cup of coffee tasting like stale water. i attended my classes and worked on my finals, thinking that if i did anything to acknowledge her death, it would be made real.
i asked my dad if he was sad his mother-in-law died. we were her favourite people—the only ones who kept up with her unraveling mind and picked up the things she threw onto the floor. he said “i don’t know where the grief starts and ends.”
even now i still feel that way. where did it start? where does it end?
in 2020, my dad’s dad died.
he was a man who didn’t want me for being mixed, who said he’d spit on my dad’s grave one day because my dad left his family. but in 2019, i hugged my estranged angkong2 and he shook my dad’s hand, and he said hello to my mom and asked if she still worked in the bank; that he needed help with some documents.
when he died, we arranged for his funeral and my dad carried out the rites of the eldest son.
his brother, who had been full of hate for their father, started posting photos of them on facebook and telling stories again. my dad says the guilt of not wanting to greet their father one last time must’ve been weighing on him deeply, but who can blame him? their father was not a good man.
i wasn’t particularly sad my angkong died. it felt more surreal, folding paper money for a man who disowned me, but i was also sad for him. after everything was said and done, the children who he left were the only ones who were there to see him off; his ex-wife was the only one to visit his grave.
after my grief in 2021, i was angry. why did my grandmothers have to leave me one by one? i wasn’t ready for that. i wanted more time with them—to show them my graduation gown, to show them my first paycheck.
i was angry at god for taking my a-ma away from me so soon; to have her die in the hospital alone with her caretaker because we couldn’t be with her inside. i was angry that she had to be cremated on her own, with no one but the workers to pray for her. i was angry at the maid and the driver who plagued their house with covid, infecting her in the process. i was angry that my grandmother, who weighed almost 60 kilos alive, came home as a bag of ashes worth less that 3.
i was angry that my grandma had to be taken away like that; that she’d left while i was half asleep—that i watched her die in front of me. i was angry that i had to be the only grandchild who had to bear this pain on my own, that i had to be the only one to remove her rings and watch before they wheeled her away.
i was angry that my grand aunt had to suffer so painfully before she died; that my grandma didn’t even give me a chance to spoil her before she took her with her.
i was so, so angry—so, so sad.
i have been celebrating their life and their death for three years. draping my grief in black cloth, like a piece of furniture you don’t really want to see anymore, but don’t want to throw away, for three years.
at home, we still turn my grandma’s lampshade on every night. in my dad’s house, they offer food and flowers to my a-ma’s portrait everyday—the tradition of calling her favourite brother daily is kept alive by my dad’s sister. my grand aunt is remembered with the love letter a former lover had written to her (we joke about it and sigh, laughing at my jovial grand aunt’s antics; the forever young maiden).
slowly, very slowly, i am shedding my mourning clothes; i am seeing the beauty in the world once more and testing new waters. it's taken me a long time to get here; gallons of tears shed over meals eaten alone, countless nights spent crying into my pillow, but the clouds overhead are clearing up.
the world keeps moving, regardless of the time we have spent loving and mourning; despite the time we spent standing still. i have so much to catch up on, so much love and light and life to make up for.
the road ahead of me is long, with twists and turns as beautiful as they are morose. it’s daunting, moving forward without the people i love, but i have my 14 year old dog to keep me company on the journey ahead.
in the meantime, i’ll leave the lights in my room turned on, just in case my grandmothers want to come visit.
ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚
on june 14th, we celebrated my dad's birthday at home. for the first time in over a year, my grandma was given a glass of her favourite drink: an ice cold coke, to which she drank gleefully and jokingly said "my life is complete now, i can go with no worries." and then she looked at me and said "i'll never forget your name, even if i forget everyone else."
my a-ma passed away on march 17 of the same year (which was yesterday where i'm from). during her stay in the hospital, every time i called her she would smile and say "hi misha, are you studying hard?" a-ma, i hope you know i graduated now, and i have a big girl job. i studied hard enough to finish my degree!
when my grand aunt died, i had noticed that the hearse that brought her to the cemetery bore my grandma's initials. my mom says that grandma just couldn't leave her be; she raised my grand aunt after all. just like with my grandmother, she would only remember me by the end of her life.
it took me having my own blog to realise that what happened to me was traumatic. i never realised how much was left unsaid between us, and how deeply affected i still am. i thought i was being dramatic all this time! i'd always kicked myself for being so dramatic over it; everyone dies, life goes on, but i guess i was wrong. it's okay to grieve and, more importantly, it's okay to start moving on.
also, re: my dad's relationship with his own father, i wouldn't say they were on good terms at the end, but my dad said "hate is tiring. anger even more so. when i look back at our relationship, i don't even know why i hated him so much; why i was so angry all the time." they had a total of maybe 1-2 phone calls before he died.
as always, here is a song i found last night while reading the premonition by banana yoshimoto.
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