In memory of my mom who passed away in 2006…
After my mom passed away, my father was, and is still missing my mom very much. He feels guilty about my mom passed away in the hospital alone without anyone of us being with her. He feels deeply regret blaming himself for not being there with my mom when she took her last breath. He believes that maybe my mom had something to say to him before dying, but now and forever, he will never know what my mom wanted to say to him before she died.
Everyday he just want to sleep and sleep, hoping that my mom will show up in his dream and talk to him. Every time when I went to visit him, he was so sad and crying, telling me that my mom didn’t come into his dream. One year later, himself being paralyzed on the bed, he was still waiting for my mom to appear in his dream. He was so disappointed. With tears in his eyes, he asked me why he couldn’t see my mom in his dream? Another thing that he kept blaming himself is, for being impatient and shouting at my mom when my mom needed his care and support for everyday routine, for the last two years before she passed away.
Due to this deep sadness missing my mom, he gave up on himself to get better. He didn’t want to go for physiotherapy or any kind of treatments or rehabilitation. He gave up on living from the moment he got paralyzed. It was more than four years now he is paralyzed and he is getting weaker and weaker…
He got paralyzed was because he went to the hospital for a body check up one day, and the nurse asked him to perform some exercises while sitting on the bed… He lost balance and fell down the bed, and his head hit the floor first… He went into coma. They sent him to Emergency Unit. There’s nothing they could do… They brought him to ICU… They informed my sister… When my sister arrived, my father was awake but with half of his body paralyzed… The doctor explained that there were three blood clots in his head that caused him paralyzed… We couldn’t undo anything even though if it was somebody’s negligence and responsibility…
My sister was thinking of getting some compensation by suing the hospital and the nurse… I told my sister, that there was no need to sue anyone… The nurse had no intention for my father to fell down from the bed… The nurse didn’t want this to happen… The nurse might be feeling so guilty already… Even if we sued the hospital or the nurse and got some compensation many years later, it wouldn’t change the fact that my father was paralyzed and it wouldn’t stop my father from being paralyzed and suffering… We should forgive and let go… One day this nurse might become a great nurse by learning from this incident…
My brother is taking care of him now, and I continue to support them financially. My brother couldn’t work because of taking care of my father. His wife also needs to take care of her own father who is paralyzed as well… What a “sad” story of our family…
My mom was paralyzed for more than 2 years before she died. She needed special care and attention from my father and my sister to help her for going to the toilet, cleaning, bathing, eating, drinking, changing clothing, resting, going somewhere, and bringing her to the hospital and traditional Chinese acupuncture centre for body check ups and treatments for a few times a week.
It was not easy to take care of a paralyzed person for 24 hours a day. Everyone got tired, exhausted, impatient, and frustrated. My mom had no choice but had to depend on my father and my sister to be her arms and her legs for everything. It was very hard for a person like my mom who used to be very independent and strong, but suddenly she lost all her mobility and freedom to do simple things, and had to depend on somebody else just for going to the toilet and cleaning herself. It was not easy for both of the person who needed help and the person who gave help.
I could never blame or complain about how my father, my sister and her daughters for being impatient with my mom and shouted at my mom frequently, when they lost their patience for being exhausted from taking care of a paralyzed person. Everyone was exhausted and frustrated. I could totally understand that. The person in sickness was suffering. The people who care for the sick person also were suffering.
I felt compassionate for my mom for being paralyzed because no body would want to be like that, being helpless losing the strength and mobility. I also felt compassionate for my father, my sister and her daughters, for being unwittingly to care for a paralyzed person. No body would enjoy spending many hours looking after a paralyzed person who needed so much care and attention. I also felt compassionate for my the other two brothers who blamed themselves, and felt bad and guilty for not being able to help out financially. I felt compassionate for myself for not being able to be there for my mom all the time, because I have to be at somewhere else making money to provide financial support for the family.
I need to be able to take care myself in order to take care of my family. I never worried. Being worried would not change anything. Worrying would not make my mom’s suffering to go away nor would make my family’s condition to become better. Instead of worrying, I use the energy to perform lots of merits to help myself and to help other beings, including my family is also one of the beings that needed help.
More than 12 years ago, my parents used to live with me in Taman Sri Sentosa flat. After my late brother in law passed away, my sister wanted to move to Senawang, a place about 1 hour drive away from KL. Why? Only she knew… Maybe she wanted to get away from this place that gave her so much unhappy memories. Maybe she needed a change of environment and change of job, to get a new perspective in her life. Just to feel different… Maybe she wanted to live in a house close to the country side than being in the city, where she can see the mountains and the big blue sky from her house…
She did mentioned that she would like to buy a landed house in Senawang because the price of the properties there was a lot cheaper than what we could get in Kuala Lumpur. And she could get a job in Senawang. Senawang is an industrial area, there are many big factories. It would make more sense if she lived there than to travel back and forth between KL and Senawang everyday.
She found a job in Senawang. She also found a landed corner house for 53,000 RM, which you won’t get the same price for the same type of property in KL.
Due to her two young daughters were studying in schools near to our home, she didn’t want to bring the daughters with her. If she brought the daughters with her, she would have to pay someone to take care of the children when she’s at work. Her monthly salary was not much. She couldn’t afford a nanny. She also had a lot of debts needed to pay back. And so, she left the two daughters with us, my parents and I, to take care of them. She would (if possible, every month) give 400 RM to my parents for taking care of her two daughter and their daily expenses. My parents also responsible for sending them to schools and bring them back from schools. The elder daughter was going to a school in the next village about 3 kilometers away. And the younger daughter was in a kindergarten in O.U.G. about 8 kilometers away from our house.
She moved to Senawang, thinking of having a brighter future. She wanted to have big house, big car… She wanted to invest in property. She bought a shop lot. She wanted to invest in life insurance. She bought 8 life insurance policies at one time. She wanted to go for holiday staying in 4/5 stars hotel pampering herself once in a while. She used her many different credit cards to pay for everything if possible. House and car installments, insurance premiums, holidays, petrol, shopping, dining, and etc. But she didn’t realize that her ambitions was too many and too big, which she ended up with having more and more debts…
She was and is a very nice and friendly person. She won’t have bad intentions for anybody. She seldom gets angry unless it is something really unbearable… She was an outgoing person who likes to go everywhere and do everything, go into the sea, up to the mountains. She wanted to have a comfortable condition of life. She wanted to provide my parents with a better quality of life. She wanted to give her daughters the best that she could give. All she wanted was just to live a better life… That was totally nothing wrong.
She involved in Red Crescent Movement helping many people everywhere when she was in school. She continued to help many people everywhere after she finished school. She lost her own handbag many times while trying to help some people who were injured in car accidents on the road. She was and still is a good friend to anybody. She’s very open-minded. She was one of the last batch students that went through English medium education. She reads, writes and speaks good English. She loves reading. She could finished reading one book and a bar of 200gm chocolate at the same time within a few hours time. She loved singing and played the guitar. She was a happy and care free person…
But, all these won’t guarantee that she won’t be getting into financial problems…
When she was living in Senawang, she would come back to Taman Sri Sentosa to see her daughters once in a while. If she didn’t come, my parents would drive to Senawang to bring her daughters to see her. Every time when my parents went to her house, my parents would be cleaning and tidying up her house for her. She didn’t like to wash the dishes after cooking and eating. Sometimes she left the dirty dishes on the table for weeks until the mold started to become one foot tall. My parents were being compassionate to her and cleaned up the house for her every time.
Her elder daughter, my eldest niece was quite a “naughty” child. She would tell lies and steal money since she was just 6 years old. One day when she was about 9 years old, I found out that my one and only 50 Ringgit note had been missing from my purse. I was sure that I had one piece of 50 Ringgit note in my purse. It was gone…
I knew exactly how much money I had because I didn’t have much money left for myself after given most of my money to my family. I was very upset then. I knew that it must be her. I couldn’t control my anger. I was thinking that we had been taking care of her but that was what she did to us. “She stole my money that I earn so hard and I didn’t even have any extra money left for myself. All my money were for my family… How could she steal the tiny little money that I had…” I got really, really angry. I shouted at her… I told her that I was going to call the police to send her to jail…
At that stage of my life, I was very unhappy due to ignorance, and I was very angry with the situation in my family and I didn’t have the wisdom to control my anger and behavior… I was over-powered by ignorance and anger…
At the beginning she didn’t want to admit that she had stolen the money. She was famous for her stubbornness. One time, her school teacher punished her for something “bad” that she did in the school. The teacher gave her a stroke of caning on her palm. She didn’t retreat her hand, and she didn’t cry. The teacher became more furious, she gave her a few more strokes and hit harder each time. She still wouldn’t retreat her hand and wouldn’t cry. The teacher gave another few more strokes until her palm started bleeding… The teacher stopped.
She came home with the injured palm, swollen and bleeding. My parents found out what had happened to her, and went to the school to complain about it to the school principal. The teacher was sent to another school to teach… The entire school knew about this, and she became famous for her stubbornness.
After a few times of questioning with me shouting at her madly. She went out. And after a few minutes, she came back with some money in a plastic bag. She already spent some of the 50 Ringgit. She hide the money in a plastic bag and placed it under one of the flower pots down stairs.
I was really disappointed. I called my sister who was in Senawang. I told her that she must come right away to take her daughter back with her to Senawang. I didn’t want her to live with us anymore. I was such cold hearted, uncompassionate and unforgiving. More than one and a half hours later, my sister came. She said she needed some time to arrange her daughter to go to school in Senawang. I said to her, I could wait for another few days or a few weeks, as long as I didn’t want her daughter to live with us anymore. I didn’t mind that her younger daughter, my younger niece to continue to stay with us and I didn’t mind taking care of her…
My parents were very upset. They loved me very much. They knew that I worked very hard to provide financial support for the family. They didn’t want me to be unhappy. They also loved the grandchildren very much. They couldn’t bear the pain being separated from their grandchildren. They sympathized my sister that she had to take care the child on her own as she also needed to work. They sympathized my niece that she wouldn’t get as much love and care as what they could give to her if she lived with my sister. And so, my parents made a hard decision. My father decided to go to Senawang to live with my sister and her older daughter, his grandchild, to take care of her. And my mom would live with me and take care of the younger daughter, her grandchild. My parents had to live separately since then… And traveled back and forth from KL and Senawang.
Once in a while my mom would drive to Senawang to see my father and the elder grandchild. Sometimes my father would come back to see my mom, his younger grandchild and me, of course… This was going on for some time. Until one day, it was time for my young niece to go to primary school. They decided that the easiest way for everybody, was to send her to school in Senawang as well. And my mom also moved to Senawang to be with my father and their grandchildren.
While living with my sister, my parents also helped her by cleaning up the house, cooking, gardening, washing laundry for everyone, and sending the children to school. And because my parents were living in her house during that time, my sister took it as my parents were living in her house, and my parents should do all the house works, and she didn’t need to give any money to my parents for looking after her children. She thought that since my parents were living and eating in her house, that my parents should contribute some money or doing the house works and serving her and her children… I didn’t exaggerate about this…
This didn’t make sense, right? While her children were living with us, and my parents took care of them, she would give some money to my parents for taking care of the children and for feeding them. But when my parents were doing the same thing for her, but living in her house, and doing more house work, and yet, my parents had to contribute money for being the “servants”… If somebody hired a helper to do some house work, the helper would get to live in the house, be fed and be paid accordingly, and shouldn’t be giving money to the employer while not getting paid…
But my parents never treat it as “working” for my sister for taking care of her house and the children, even though my sister took advantage of them to do everything for her… It wasn’t a “job” anyway… My parents love their daughter and grand daughters, and willingly to take care of them, and do everything for them, out of love… For my parents, they do everything for us out of love. Family love. Family never calculate how much we give and do not expect anything in return… But somehow their daughter took this love for granted… But yet, they didn’t mind at all… I totally understood my parents hearts, what were they thinking and feeling…
I felt that it was unfair to my parents to do so much for my sister but being treated like “free servants”, and had to pay for their stay in my sister house for food and accommodation. But, I respect their freedom to do what they wanted to do… They were happy giving all that they could give to my sister. My parents sympathized my sister had lost her husband and had to bring up two young children all by herself… It was very difficult for my sister to work and take care of the children at the same time… I could understand that.
The money that I gave them, they had the freedom on how they wanted to use it… I could not and should not dictate how they should spend their pocket money although it was coming from me… Once I gave away the money, the money didn’t belong to me anymore, and it’s up to them how they wanted to use it… But, I convinced my parents that they didn’t need to tell my sister how much money that I gave them every month knowing that my sister would borrowed off all the money that they had, and spent the money recklessly… They did listen to me. They took the money from me without telling my sister how much I gave them, but they continued to help out my sister’s living expenses without letting her knew about it… How great was that family love?!
Sometimes my sister didn’t have enough money for shopping for the daily needs, my parents would use their own pocket money to do the shopping without letting my sister know that the petty cash for daily shopping had finished because they didn’t want to worried my sister. They treat us as family, not being calculative… This was how much my parents loved us… Gave everything… And not asking for anything in return.
The children didn’t respect my parents at all. They shouted at my parents especially my mom after she was paralyzed. My parents loved them so much, took out their own pocket money that I gave them for helping out my sister living expenses. When my sister didn’t have enough money to give to the children for their schooling expenses and for pocket money at school, my parents would give away their own pocket money to the children… But they didn’t know how to be grateful and thankful… Again my parents didn’t mind at all, even though sometimes they complained to me about what happened, and cried…
One time, my parents had finished using the pocket money, and my sister didn’t give them money for buying rice and vegetables… My sister wasn’t eating at home for a while. She was working another part time job as guest relation officer in a Karaoke night club… My parents didn’t want to ask money from me. They didn’t want to let me know… They didn’t want to ask money from sister as well, because they knew my sister had no money to pay bills, to pay all her installments… They didn’t let my sister know that there was no more rice in the house… They were eating dried bread for days, until I passed them their pocket money through my uncle… I had been giving them enough money for their living, but they spent all their money for the grandchild and my sister… And they had to eat dried bread for many days… I felt so sad, so sad for my parents…
Many years had passed by, the elder daughter didn’t get any better or wiser… She became worse. She couldn’t stop telling lies and stealing. One day she stole her friend’s ATM card and took out lots of money from her friend’s saving accounts. She bought many dresses, shoes and bags. She came home with all these new things, and told my parents and her mother that she had a rich boyfriend who bought her all these things. Sometimes she also brought something for my sister, my parents, and the younger sister to show that she did care for the family. She was only fourteen years old. My parents and my sister didn’t suspect anything…
Until one day, her friend’s mother found out that it was her who had been stealing her daughter’s money, and came to see my sister and my father, and threatened to call the police. My father panicked. He kneel down and begged to the woman not to call the police. My father was crying. He was afraid that his grandchild would be filed criminals record and would not have a future anymore. It is a huge humiliation for a man to kneel down to a woman and beg for spareness. My sister promised that she would slowly pay her back all the stolen money which was about 4,000 Ringgit. It was a big amount for my sister as she was already having lots of debts. And so, the woman sympathized my sister situation and was moved by my father’s love for his grandchild. She accepted the deal…
I believed that my niece wasn’t really “bad”. She stole partly was because she was frustrated with the unfortunate condition of this family. Always not enough money for food and for living, not to say to have any extra enjoyments. She also wanted to be nice to the family, and to be able to give something back to the family or to help out financially. But she went for the wrong way to get the things that she wanted…
My niece didn’t learn from this. She ended up getting pregnant when she was sixteen years old and gave birth to a baby girl. She didn’t even know that she was pregnant when her period stopped for 4 months. It was when she felt sick one day and went to the hospital and found out that she was pregnant. She broke up with the baby girl’s father not long after the baby was born, and went out with some other men… And now, she is married to a young man, and gave birth to a baby boy early this year…
My sister was quite happy to be a grandmother. So as my parents were very happy to be great grandparents. They loved this great grandchild so much. This baby had brought some joy and smiles into this family while battling with financial problems. After given birth, my niece didn’t really know how to take care of a baby. This time, my sister had became the baby’s nanny…
Before this great grandchild was born, my mom was already paralyzed from stroke attack. My father and my sister had to take turn to care for her, to bring her to the toilet, to wash her, to clean her, to feed her, to bring her to the hospital and traditional Chinese acupuncture centre for body check ups and treatments for a few times a week… It was not easy.
When the great grandchild was born, it was like a “blessing” to my parents, especially for my mom. She felt so happy seeing her great grandchild. All her sadness from being disabled and being shouted by her exhausted and frustrated husband, daughter and the two grandchildren were gone when she saw this little great grandchild… My mom would cried when she told me about how she was being treated when I was not there… But she would smile when she talked about the great grandchild…
It was December 24th, 2006, after my morning yoga class at home, my sister called me. My mom had passed away in the hospital… The last time when I saw her was a few weeks ago… I told her that she didn’t need to worry for us anymore. And she should let go… I also told her that I love her very much as well as my sister and my brothers also love her very much, and I asked her what would she like to do with her funeral… She told me that she wanted to be cremated and the funeral should be held in Kuala Lumpur so that her friends could come to see her for the last time…
I told my sister what our mother had told me… And we did what she wanted us to do…
I went to the hospital with my brothers and sister in law… I saw my mom on the table. She looked so peaceful as she was smiling. I held her hands and rubbed her hands, her arms and her face… I kissed her cheek and forehead… Goodbye, mother… Thank you.
I didn’t cry…. Not until a few months later… I started to cry… For all the love that she gave me and to the family… Her sacrifice… Her wisdom… I realized how much I missed her… I had to let her go. But she’ll be with me all the times in my heart.
No matter what had happened in the past, who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s suffered most… I wish my family love and peace… Forgive and let go. Forgive ourselves for being imperfect and forgive others for being imperfect…
Life was never easy for me and my family, but I learned to be grateful, thankful and content… I learned to forgive and let go… I learned to be happy no matter what… And love unconditionally…
