Today, in the middle of chinese new year lunch, my grandmother said, "Come, I tell you," and brought me into her room. The last time she'd brought me into her room, she'd taken out her crocheted tablecloths to show me that she was skillful. This time she showed me her favourite photo of herself. She took it off the wall and gave it to me. She wanted me to crop her face out of the photo and enlarge it. There's only one occasion when anybody needs a photo like that.
She has been preparing her "last gifts" for her grandchildren (mine will be a bracelet) in a calm and happy way. It took her almost 90 years to be this calm and happy, not grumbling throughout dinners, not playing favourites, not being superstitious. Almost 90 years, but she still travels and keeps her hair black and only has crow's feet. She has an uncanny sense of what's in and what's passe, and can't stand "old people" who have inflexible ways. She can't read but she knows everything that's in the news.
Anyway, I couldn't crop her face out and enlarge it. The photo is too small and faded, and I think she only likes it because the blurness makes her look younger and she was wearing red lipstick. So my mother took a photograph of her today in front of her old cupboard. She had to take many before they met my grandmother's approval, because she wanted her diamond cross necklace to be visible. Now she wants me to photoshop away her eyebags and wrinkles.
She's so alive. It's hard to agree to help her prepare for death. But she seems to know that this is her last chinese new year, though none of us think so. I still believe she will live to see my children. My great grandmother was supposed to die in hospital, but she escaped and lived long enough to fly to hongkong to see me when I was born, and about ten years more after that. This grandmother of mine, this woman who gets more amazing each year, she cannot die yet.
Yet. We comply, because we know that we want to be just like her. The only people who can prepare for death happily are those who have lived well. My grandparents were the kind of people I'd pray for every night as a ritual, and look at them now. There were strangers at my grandfather's funeral making speeches about how he had taken care of them just before he died. My grandmother has gotten the same kind of second chance in the last few years. Each year she has become more and more alive.
She makes me feel ashamed of myself, for half-living day to day.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
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julie
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2/07/2008 11:57:00 PM
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