renegadeRICEcracker

In Loving Memory

November 4, 1945 - September 20, 2007

My mother's funeral was Friday morning, September 28. Below is the eulogy I read at her service.

My mom was an amazing mom. She was always warm, and loving, and affectionate. She was sincere, she was sensitive, she was protective, she was fun-loving, she was dependable. My mom encouraged us to do well while giving us freedom to choose our own paths. When I went through my years of indecision in college over what to do with my life, she told me that she would support whatever I chose, so long as I would be able to take care of myself. My mom was proud of us without making us feel like we were in competition with other people.

My mom just wanted us to be happy. When she first began to suspect that I was gay, she was not particularly comfortable with the idea. But she loved me, and that was more important. When I came out to her a couple years later – we’d gone for a walk on the beach and I told her as we sat and watched the sun set – she thought for a moment and said, “Connie, one of the hardest things in life is to find is someone you love who will love you and treat you well. Everyone deserves to find this whether the person they find is a man or a woman. And if there are people out there who will judge you or see you differently because you are gay, who needs them anyway?” My mom told me that she would love me no matter what, and that of course she would accept my being gay because she couldn’t imagine not having me in her life. My mom then went on to give me advice on how to ask out a girl, but also assured me that things would be okay if they didn’t work out because “there are plenty of other lesbians in the sea.”

My mother was a confidante, a protector, and a true friend. She was warm and silly and fun to be around, and I am going to miss all the small things we used to do together. I am going to miss cooking with her. When my mom first came to the US she didn’t know how to cook at all – she told me that she didn’t know what to do when her boss assumed she must be a great cook and invited her over to make an "authentic Chinese dinner," so she just boiled some chicken legs and poured soy sauce over it. (They thought it was delicious.) By the time I was old enough to remember, she could make anything, amazingly well, from egg rolls to soy sauce duck to Shanghai rice cake noodles to wontons. Even more impressive, for the last 20 years she was able to make all of this vegetarian, all of it still tasting better than anything you can get in a restaurant. I learned how to cook by being her su chef; she always said it was so fun to spend the afternoon sitting and chatting while we cut up vegetables and prepared meals together.

I am also going to miss my mom’s lovely singing voice. When my mom was in college, people used to call her the female Elvis, and someone once asked her if she wanted to sing at his club. She said no, but she always loved to sing, and I remember growing up with karaoke nights at my uncle’s house. When I got older and for the first time heard the original versions of oldies she loved to sing, I always thought they sounded tinny and empty without her beautiful voice.

I still have trouble grasping that my mom is gone, it just doesn’t seem possible. It is hard to understand that I will never take another trip with her, or watch another movie with her, or cook another meal with her. And I will miss all the times when I would look up from whatever I was doing and see her watching me, and smiling. But I believe that she is in a better place now, and that she is relieved to be freed of her body, and that she is happy.

I wish you peace, Mom. I love you.

sad

my mom had a bad day today. she has been deteriorating rapidly these last couple weeks, and today she was only alert for a few minutes. it would take me several tries to get her attention and see if, say, she was hungry, but by the end of the night she wasn't responding at all and we just sort of had to go forward with getting her ready for bed and everything. i don't think she'll be able to come downstairs again. at the end of the night, we carried her up the stairs in a chair.

after we got her in bed my sister was going through her tapes to play some music for her and she put in a karaoke tape from 1988. my mom's voice came on, singing "sing a song." she had a really strong and beautiful voice -- in college she was asked if she wanted to start singing professionally. the contrast between the singing and her laying there was jarring, and my sister and i both started crying.

we are looking at a very short time frame now, much shorter than i had been thinking in my head.

good night.

hard core!

i tried out the y by my sister's house today. i had been thinking that i would drive up to downtown here and there and work out with my regular instructors and friends, but the hour+ drive up during traffic hour yesterday disabused me of the notion that this was a workable idea. so, it was with great trepidation (i don't like change) that i ventured off to the new y.

they don't sell water there. and the cycling room is not as nice -- it's not a specific room for cycling with a mirror and cool blue/red lights, it's just a gym with bikes in the corner that you have to set up yourself. but, the instructor was nice and she played really good music, and i had a good workout. so that was good. there are a couple instructors downtown whom i really don't enjoy, and i was thinking how i would be screwed if i hated the instructor down here. but, she was good.

it's funny, the crowd is totally different. a lot of the downtown people are pretty hard core and lean (not like a college gym, but, you know, for older people), and i think they like spinning because it's a really intense cardio burn -- the most bang for your time. there spinning is three times a day, every day of the work week (mornings only on weekends). and in those classes, i am very middle of the pack, and am always in awe of the instructors and thinking i have a really far way to progress. here, i was definitely toward the more fit end of the spectrum, and pushed myself a lot more. afterward the instructor told me i am a really hard worker, asked me if i am an athlete, and told me i am really hard core. heh. hard core.

i followed up the work out with a banana, nectarine, broccoli/cauliflower/bacon salad, a sausage (in bun), and some "french munching cookies" from whole foods. i ate dinner before the workout. ha.

okay. i'm tired. goodnight!

*yawn*

i have been learning thai. thai is a crazy language. did you know they have forty-four consonants and thirty-two vowels? and five tones. that is insane! and their letters all look like very complicated little pictures. seriously, i think chinese is easier.

i have to go to sleep now. ann and i made dinner for my sister's family and my mom, and i ate a whole lot (all i've done this last couple of weeks is eat non-stop) and now i have a food coma.

but before i devolved into food coma ann and i went to whole foods to get some original flavor teddy puffs for andrew. this poor baby is allergic to everything. on a 0-6 scale of allergies, he has:

whole grain wheat/barley -- 5
milk -- 5
soy -- 2
peanut -- 2
egg -- 5
rice -- 0

and that's just for what he was tested for. we already know he is also allergic to apples. do you know how hard it is to find things without whole grains, soybean oil, or eggs? the original flavor teddy puffs are the only munchy food he can eat -- other than that, it's the special order amino-only formula he has to eat until he's 2, and baby food (wendy will start him on other solids soon, but seriously -- no soy sauce? what is he going to eat? white rice with salt?). the thing is that ever time wendy has gone to whole foods, they only had one box of the teddy puffs. and on sunday when i went, there weren't any. and then today i went to another one and they didn't have any. what the hell? you would think they might notice that demand is rather high for these things and, say, ORDER MORE OF THEM? anyway. the third whole foods i went to had them in stock, so we cleaned them out and came home with thirteen boxes. the cashier cracked up at us through the whole transaction.

okay, i'm off to bed. sorry for the randomness -- but i thought it would be better than another depressing entry. good night!

this is hard

everything right now is a strange mixture of things seeming like they are happening really quickly, and things seeming like they are happening really slowly. it's been over a year and a half -- a long haul -- with my mom moving through various changes, and because things progress incrementally you don't notice quite as much. but then you blink, and you are surprised by how goddamned fast everything is moving. and you are surprised where you are because you were lulled into a sense of routine. (with each routine really being just a facade, since things are moving quickly enough that "routines" only last a week or two.)

today was a tough day. my mom is getting less alert, less lucid, less present, less... everything. it would take several minutes to get a simple answer to a question, and she dozes off all the time, wherever she is, sitting, standing, whatever. and when i was trying to help her get ready for bed, i looked at her in the mirror and was jolted by how emaciated she is, and how sick she looks. and i was thinking, goddamn, i've been thinking about how she gets weaker bit by bit, and how it is slow, but really... really it is not slow. a week ago she could have some conversation while sitting together over lunch. two weeks ago she could stay awake through most of a movie. three (four?) weeks ago we could play mahjong together for short stretches of time. and on my birthday people were telling me how great she looked (and she did).

...

and it's hard to see my mom get confused over something small. my mom was always so quick and so together. and so smart, and so silly, and so funny and so warm... and i still have trouble grasping that this is happening.

i was planning on going back to work intermittently after this week, but i'm really just going to have to see how it goes. i think we are shifting into a point where we really don't want to leave my mom alone at all (she's never home alone, but the nanny is watching the boys, not her). so it depends on how my sister and i break this down, and on what needs my case has and how flexible they are.

i pretty much spent the last year and a half dreading this that we are heading into. both because of all the overarching things going on, and because i am not so good with lots of nitty-gritty care-taking things. but there is no way around it. and i guess what i've learned in this last year or so is that, while there might be many things you think you can't face, when they happen, you just do, because you have to. so... we are going to face this. and that's all.

anyway. goodnight.

a break!

i have been exhausted. exhausted from being constantly busy, but also from the overwhelming emotionality of everything (and no down time to sit with it). for the last i don't know how long i've been trying to bill a quasi-normal amount of hours while working partial days from home so that i could help my mom with her breakfast and lunch, and whatever other things she needed, and then go into the office so that i could work out. then i would go back to my sister's and help with my mom's homeopathic thing (which takes 2h 15m), or split it with my sister. i spent the majority of my weekends at my sister's, trying to help babysit so she could get a break (i got the almost daily workouts, she should get some time to recharge, too), and would only go home for maybe one evening a week. and while it's not so terrible, at my sister's i can hang out a little and play with the babies, it is wearing never to be at my place or really have time to do nothing.

and... i have been breaking down. i've been having anxiety dreams (you know the one where you dream your teeth are falling out? someone explained to me that, since teeth are constant and fixed things, you have those dreams when you feel like everything is out of control. anyway, i had that dream on saturday. twice. and then a weird dream involving working out, a coworker, and a partner from my office. yick.) and i have just been really... well... tired and sad. starting to want to sleep all the time.

i mean, i have to say, in the midst of that, i did get a little break of sunshine -- curly-haired ben came out to visit from japan for a day and a half, and i ran away with him to the beach and various eating excursions -- so so so good to see him! and i took a little time this last weekend to cook dinner for friends on friday night and have a little bbq on monday afternoon. oh -- and in the midst of that, my a/c went out. on saturday, ann and i replaced the thermostat, after which it started working again, but then on monday when people came over it had stopped working again and it was NINETY THREE DEGREES in my place! IN MY PLACE!!! brian explained that there is a fuse box on the side of the unit on the roof, and we went out, and he helped me figure out which one was mine, and he reset it, and voila! fixed! i told brian i love him as much as i could any man. by the time people left, it had cooled to a lovely 87 degrees. yay brian!

anyway. all of this babble is leading up to my decision to take tomorrow and all of next week off for family leave. i don't think i'm ready yet to go on permanent leave, but i am going to take a week and see how it is. if i spend all day with my mom, i can actually take time to help her and cook for her (while she still wants to eat at all, even if it's just a little), and then i can spend some more evenings at home while my sister is there. and i can still work out. and that sounds... SO FANTASTIC. a break!

to make it even better, it looks like this will fit really well with work, too. i was worried because one of my cases settled and another project i was working on was accelerated to be done this week (busy week -- i billed 16.3 hours yesterday!), leaving me with potentially nothing to do. i've been focusing a lot of anxiety on work, so the idea of looking for something to do was adding to my stress. but, i talked to a guy i work for today, and he said that since the partner is out next week, they were planning on regrouping at the beginning of the following week anyway and that there would be plenty of work for me. so, that is a big relief. that probably sounds stupid, but as my coworkers can attest to i've been stressing about work to a completely irrational degree, and this conversation completely calmed me down so that now i can enjoy my little break without worrying about what will happen when i come back.

so... yay! i will get some rest! i will have some non-rushed time to spend with my mom! such a relief! i am also happy about it because i was thinking that i could spend some more time with my mom before she deteriorates further. she sleeps a lot right now, and is really tired and weak a lot, but can still move around some, and i'd like to eek out whatever quality time i still can with her.

anyway. i am exhausted. i only slept 4 hours last night. i'm off to have lunch with a friend. and i am not working for another 10 days! woo!