Monthly Archives: July 2010

Cousin called and said mom is back in the hospital.   He was going out of town so it was a few days of agonizing over what’s happening.  He called this morning and said she is stable and they are transferring her out of ICU.  It is a relief and yet it’s not. 

Talked to the neighbor yesterday, we shared a bottle of Parduchi.  And she said, for some people it seems that it takes a while for them to process their lives before they pass away like her mom.  Her mom was in a semi-awake state for a while too, and she said her mom was mentioning names of the dead relatives and once she was making pie.  So could it be that we have to re-live our lives in that state before we can pass on?  Is it what people describes as the out-of-body experience?  No one knows.  But it is something for the living to ponder.

So maybe mom is doing the processing now.  As long as she is out of it while she does that, I would feel more at peace.  The nurses like to shake and wake her to see if she is arousable which disturbs her process probably if that’s the case.  I hope she can process it fast and move on and out of the failing and suffering body.  Is it bad for me to think that?

Mom was sent to the emergency roon and then ICU and then the infectious disease ward.  I took a month’s leave from work and stayed at her bedside in the hospital for a month.  I liked the time when she was unconscious more than when she was semi awake.  She lookd peaceful when she was out of it but moaned and uncomfortable when she was semi awake.

I don’t think I could take it more than 4 weeks I took off.  It was unbearable to see the doctors or the nurses poke her or stuck tubes in her.  I ran out of her room every time they came in to ‘help’ her in that way.   For some reason, she did not want to acknowledge me either when she was semi-awake.  I felt bad for her when they hurt her, I felt bad when she ignored me.  I felt bad when the relatives pushed me to make hard decisions or told me what they think I should do with her money.  I felt stressed out the whole time. 

Thank god for friends.  Even friends I made a year ago treated me nicer and more honest than those relatives.  The relatives expected rewards or undeserved respects.  I, in my American ways of thinking, did not think they deserve any such thing.  But I was too timid to give them the piece of my mind.  So i suffered, biting my tongue, worrying if i would blow up and show disrespect, and I drank in my hotel room and ate way too much.

I brought 3 extra pounds back.  My stress and depression is still with me after a week.  I feel that noone really understands what I had gone through and I can’t really tell anyone how I feel.  I’m stuck between the American way and the Chinese traditions.  How ridiculous.