In other's eyes, I am...

Every time I watched “Healing Hands”, I always received something from this Chinese Medical Series. Somehow, it always imparts some new emotions/different way of thinking or acceptance of life within me. This time around, as I continue watching the series, it makes me relive everything that happened within my family and appreciate life again at another level. In every parent’s eyes, their children are always young, rather we are 20, 30, or 40, in our parents’ eyes, they remember us when we first started walking, when we first started talking, or when we first started attending preschool.

Before turning 18, I don’t really quite know what “death” is, I know the word, I know what happens when someone dies, but it seems foreign to me in the sense that I never truly experienced it. No-one from my immediate circle has died, thus during my childhood, I have never been exposed to the reality of death or what effects death could bring to everyone. Growing up in this sheltered environment, in my father’s eyes, I am forever young, someone that is too young to understand, or too young to deal with the harsh reality of life. At the odd age of 18, when I am already an adult, when I am supposed to know “everything”, I really know nothing! I don’t even remember how I learned my sister has cancer, all I remembered was my whole family waiting in this playing room in the oncology ward, and at that time, I don’t even know what the word “oncology” means. I just remembered sitting around waiting as my little sister did a biopsy, now, I realized I didn’t even know the results. The next thing I remembered was we were ushered into this room waiting for her to come out from the Anastasia. However, I believe the harsh reality of life forces my dad to tell me things that he too, is foreign with. I think what is foreign to him is the fact that he has to tell me something so important, yet no way of escaping or beautifying it for me. Looking back, it was probably very very difficult for him to tell me, probably because he never told me anything serious before anyways, and probably because he has to contain his emotions the entire time. I remembered him driving me to Children Hospital to visit my sister, which took around 40 min from our place; only around 5 min. before we arrived, did he say to me that he’ll be going to HK soon. “Why”, I asked, and I think all he said to me was he has cancer, so he needs to get an operation in HK, and I need to stay here with my mom and help her as my sister recovers. Since my sister seems fine, I didn’t think what my dad would go through would be anything different. “Why can’t you do it here”, I asked, the response, “because it would be faster in HK”. Only later, when I hopped onto the plane to visit my dad in HK after the first semester at university did I find out the reason he operates in HK was because the tumor was so large that doctors in Canada were scared.

Even with my dad lying in the hospital bed, I still did not comprehend the dire situation, though, I did detect something just didn’t seem right. “Why did you want me to fly to HK to see you dad?”. Even at that point, I am just a little child to my dad, a sheltered and fragile thing that just could not be shattered of its innocence. “You are on vacation, why can’t you just come visit me? Your shoes are too high, take some money and buy a pair of runners.” “Can I have some money to buy a watch, mine is broken”. What my dad said, “Take some more, go buy a nice watch.” Then, I remembered this one afternoon when my dad told me to go downstairs to buy some grapes, and I slowly walked with him out to the hallway armchairs, and I peeled grapes for him to eat. “Do I look really yellow and bloated in the stomach?” He asked me, and yea, my dad looks quite sick to me, but I said, “You look better than before, I think you’re dong better today”. Silence. Then my dad said “When you buy stocks later, buy longer term stocks with growth potential, like coco-cola. You need to be strong, you need to take care of your mother and sisters if I am not here”. Looking down, not knowing what else to say, I said “Ok”, and my dad said, “OK, I think the patient in the next bed has finished undressing, let’s go back”.

In my eyes, my sister is the little baby that just doesn’t grow up. I still remember the day my mother proudly brings her home into her baby crib. I remembered poking her and making stupid faces to make her giggle and laugh. I remembered everyone saying how this little baby has such humongous eyes, and when she grows up, she will turn into this really really beautiful girl. So at 17, I felt she was too young to understand, reality is too cruel, bad news aren’t any fun. I kept telling her to keep going, to not give up, to believe in miracles. My saying back then, “only if you believe that miracles happen, will they happen to you”. I kept pounding these messages into her, and she truly is the most courageous little thing I have met. In my mother’s eyes, she is this golden little apple, because she has the ability to make people laugh and the room just lit up because of her presence. She has fine-tuned the skills of making people laugh and remember her, so when fate brings in the horrible reality of death and strike a second time, I don’t want it to happen again. I felt very close to my sister, we walked every step of the way as we battle her cancer, we just can’t lose, I can’t, I won’t lose, I have to win this, this is important. I grasped on and on, when doctors in Vancouver can’t stop the metastasis, we’ve to leave; we haven’t truly tried authentic Chinese medicine yet. We have to move to Guangzhou, the best Chinese doctor in China lives there, he could help us, it would be fine. Major culture shock, living in Guangzhou is no fun, everyone is miserable, there is nothing to do. That’s ok, we live just down the block from the doctor, we could win the disease, you will get better. In 3 months, because of massive internal bleeding, we exited Guangzhou via ambulance and zoomed straight to QM Hospital in HK. Keep fighting, it would be ok, we’ll get Prof Feng, he’s the best liver cancer doctor in Asia, and one of the top ranking ones in the world, it would be fine. Through ulcers and internal bleeding, I asked my sister, “Are you afraid of dying?”. “No, I saw daddy in my dreams the other night. He told me to go to him, I started crying and said no”. “I wanted to go back to Vancouver.” I said to my sister, “You can’t yet, HK is not so bad, if we fly home, the doctors from Children’s Hospital can’t help you. What if you started bleeding again, the doctors in Canada can’t react as fast as the ones in HK. You be good, I’ll bring you what you want to eat tomorrow”. “I want to eat chips”. “You can’t, if you eat something like that, you might start to bleed again”. “I want to eat chips”. My mom went down to 7-11 and gave her some secretly. I understand now, you’ve to grant someone’s final wishes.

In my mother’s eyes, I am strong, I am independent, I can take care of my other sister. My mother cannot let go of my sister’s death. I couldn’t either, if my daughter was in a coma, and woke up from the coma, for just one day before falling back into the coma again. And the day my daughter woke up from the coma to talk to me was Mother’s Day. So my mother decided she wanted to be with my dad and my sister, because I could handle it on my own, I would not abandon my other sister, I could take care of her too. My mother was just as sheltered and protected as I was. After marrying my dad, she became a housewife, dedicated all her time to the family and her daughters, so how could she handle blow after blow? My mother tried, very hard, to pull herself together after my sister was gone, but life has lost its meanings. When she left me alone in this world, I was beyond sad, I asked why, how could she just leave me like this? Behind the sadness was the anger, how could she make me deal with this again? Strike 3 in my life, I am exhausted; I need this to be over. Looking at my mom’s passing one year later, she needs to know that I am very proud of her, she was a supermom. She did so much others can’t do, and she stood up and was very strong. No mom, you were never a burden, when you choose to go to heaven to join my dad and sister, I see you guys smiling at me in my dreams.

In my own eyes, I often feel like the weeds that grow wildly in gardens; no matter how much you pull it or weed it out, it will stand up again, it will continue to live through the harshest of circumstances and conditions. I don’t dwell in my past, I acknowledge experiences mould me into who I am, but I would not dig a hole and live in misery. "Only when I’m brave enough to look into the past will there be a future". I want to be strong, and I want to live my life, make something for myself. I don’t live with my sister, she’s in Vancouver, but we are closer than we ever were. Perhaps it is this distance or the fact we are not seeing each other everyday that make us value each other more. Standing one year after all that has happened at home, I am stronger emotionally. I could talk more easily about what happened, I could share more openly. Not a day goes by that I do not think about my dad, my mom, or my sister in heaven, and even though they are not physically with me, they continue to teach me things everyday. I continue to have this desire to achieve and do things to make them proud, and when I do something I feel is bad, I feel shitty and scared that I would get into trouble when I get home. Then I would shrug and go, “What the heck, there is no one to yell at me”. In my dad’s eyes, I am a little girl that never grows up, that needs to be protected from the brutal facts of life. In my youngest sister’s life, I am an annoying older sister that just won’t listen, it’s not fair! In my mother’s eye, I could take care of myself; I am strong enough to withstand anything. In my other sister’s eyes, I have changed from telling her what to do and walked away yelling to someone she could call when she couldn’t fall asleep. What am I in your eyes?