15:30, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2014
My father's mother is dying. News came a few days ago; she's got about two weeks at most. My father is going back to China asap to see her one last time. As for Japan, which is in 10 days, he won't be coming along. Even if she doesn't die, he hasn't the heart to go on holiday while his mother is lying on her deathbed.
Consequently though, it means the first overseas family trip in 3 years is essentially not going to include the whole family. And honestly half the fun in family trips is being with family.
My mother's reaction is hilariously cruel; I feel like I'm laughing at something that's actually horrible. She's sorry and sad for my father, so much that I know she forgives him bailing on the family trip. But the disappointment of lost family time is only secondary to the utter despair she feels at wasting everything we've paid and planned for Japan: plane tickets and accommodation, while a separate plane ticket to China is bought on top. She's seriously so angry and frustrated at wasting the money we paid for in advance--probably about $1000 for my father I think?
I can't describe how I feel, when I see my saddened father embrace my mother tightly because he's so lost and scared and needs it so much, while my mother hugs him back on the verge of tears because she's losing so much money. It's crazy. It's funny because of how different they are, but I know it's fucked up, how my mother can care about this over everything else.
I definitely know from whom I get my emotional coldness and inability to sympathise from.
To be honest, I can understand my mother. My parents both save a lot, but my dad does it because he still bleeds communist and doesn't need anything but the clothes on his back and the vegetables he grows in the backyard, while my mother does it because she's logical, practical and just plain stingy. Like me, I guess, and I absolutely, fucking hate wasting money too. But in this instance, I don't really seem to mind: maybe it's because it's not my money? But I think it's because, well it's only $1000, and he has every reason to go back home, to see the mother who birthed and raised him one last time while she's still alive.
In a way, she blames his mother, for 'dying' right before the trip, when she's been holding on for the past ten years, when she could 'die' in a month's time and a month earlier and not have this much effect on our trip. I think it's a little hypocritical of my mother to be so unforgiving when she herself went back to China a few years ago to visit her dying great-uncle on his deathbed. I know she knows it's no one's fault, that the timing is just unlucky. I'm just a little disappointed that she gives in to her negative accusing feelings instead of letting go and following what's right and true. But I guess everyone deals with things differently.
But I do also know, that even if my mother's mother died today, she would still go to Japan. Even if she had to go the the funeral the day before we left, and even if she might cry every night while she's there, she would still go. And to be honest, I think I would do that too. Like mother, like daughter I guess.
My feelings: I've been looking forward to this trip for months, and it's disappointing to see shit happening right before. But even more, I know that losing your own parent is probably one of the saddest things you can ever experience, I can't even fathom how my father feels, especially since he's a mummy's boy and my grandfather has already passed. So I understand why this is what happens, and there's really nothing or no one to blame.
As for my grandmother: I'm not close with her at all. I can't communicate with her, I haven't ever interacted with her in any sort of familial way except for greeting her and eating silently together. I don't know what she was like before she lost her mind (from old age) and she's actually had a lot of close calls in the past decade. So I think I'm also not as sad because it's something we've sort of all been expecting for a long time. More than feeling sad for her death, I feel sad for my father who has to lose his last remaining parent. This time, it's not his friend, his cousin, his relative, it's his own mother. It's like the ultimate strike that death is really all that's left in my father's life.
As for Japan: I don't think it'll change much for me. I feel sad, but not too strongly, not too often, because of lack of proximity. It's more like a current of electricity which sparks every now and then. Carrying on.
Weather: cloudy and grey but not cold.