Category Archives: family

No more gifts

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My mom loves her gifts. But she also is eagerly awaiting the day after my wedding so she can hound me about her future grandchildren — you know, the ones who I haven’t been thinking much about at all.

“Don’t buy me any more gifts,” she said yesterday. “You should be saving money for your future children… my future grandchildren!” Then she starts chuckling. I can see her smiling through the phone. The smile is so big that I can feel it through the phone. “You know, I need grandchildren! I need them soon!”

She used to hound me about saving money for a future down payment on a house. Now that I am getting married in a month, she is hounding me for the grandchildren. It’s always something.

Annoyed FedEx delivery guy

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I had stems of 24 large cymbidium orchids sent to my mom for her birthday. When I placed the order, which I thought I got a pretty good deal on since cymbidiums are one of the most expensive orchids to buy, I envisioned my mother’s face ecstatically opening the box to uncover these fat, beautiful cymbidium faces, freckled with fuchsia and yellow and staring back at her. I anticipated that given the long life of orchids, the blooms would last her until the time she and my dad departed San Francisco to drive down to San Clemente for our wedding. Little did I know that the path to get to her would not be so smooth and bright.

On Friday morning, the FedEx delivery guy comes to my parents’ house and rings the bell. No one answers at around 9:39am, when he attempted the delivery. He rang again, and still no answer. So what does he decide to do instead of calling the recipient to ask when she would be home so he could re-attempt the delivery? Meh, no problem. He just takes the box, throws it over the gate, and drives off!

My parents come home about two hours later to discover what appears to be a very large florist box sitting in the middle of their staircase. My dad later told me the box was dented on one side, and when they took it in and opened it, six of these very beautiful (and expensive) blooms immediately fall off. Some of the petals had fallen off and had been smashed. Someone had mishandled these poor orchids, and this was just not right.

I online chatted The Bouqs and complained about this shortly after my mom called me, and immediately received a full credit back and numerous apologies. I just kept on imagining a FedEx delivery guy being so frustrated that the recipient was not home and then taking the liberty of throwing the freaking box over the gate. What the heck was he thinking?!

 

Someone’s turning 62

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My mom is turning 62 tomorrow. I’m not allowed to say “happy birthday” to her since she’s a JW, and her people don’t believe in birthdays, but since she is still herself, she loves receiving gifts, and she indirectly expects to get something around the date of her birthday every single year. Chris decided to send her a surprise dinner from some Asian restaurant tonight (I did not know this), and there was no card that said who the food was from.

So my mom called tonight to ask if I sent her food. My initial response was… No, I did not? Why? She said that someone ordered food with a label that said “happy birthday,” and that if I did not send it, she would give it to my aunt upstairs because maybe she ordered it.

“Auntie Linda’s birthday is not in February!” I exclaimed. “And when has she ever ordered food delivery before?!”

I looked over at Chris on the couch. “You sent something to her, didn’t you?” I said to him. He gives me this funny side-eyed look, and so I know he did it. “Chris sent it,” I said to my mom on the phone. “Don’t give it to my aunt!”

These are all the games that my family plays, and Chris just joins right in.

Engagement photos

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Our photographer finished editing the full set of our engagement photos, so I sent the gallery to my parents so they could see them. My mom said she loved the photos and said we both looked really good in them, but she critiqued my choice of wearing jeans for half of them. “Why are you wearing such weird clothes in the first half?” she asked. “Who wears jeans to things like this?”

My mom has had a life-long hatred of denim and anything jeans-related. She’s always looked at them as working men’s clothing, the type of clothing you wear if you are changing tires or working on a construction site. She has no idea why anyone would want to wear jeans every day or why anyone would find them attractive or comfortable.

“But that was meant to be the casual clothing photos,” I said to her. “I’m more dressed up in the second half.”

She doesn’t care. The jean hate continues.

Dream recap

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I was walking up to Grand Central tonight and talking to my mom on the phone when I decided to tell her that I dreamt that Ed never died. I guess I thought to tell her because she brought him up. Well, what I left out was that I also dreamt that although he was alive, she had died. But hey, she doesn’t have to know every detail, right?

“He said he never died,” I told her. “He said he is still here with us. He said he has always been here with us.”

“He never died?” My mom repeated pensively. “He never died… Yes, you know that when Armageddon comes, Ed will be resurrected, and he will live on paradise on earth with us forever.”

My mom loves her convenient truths. If paradise on earth really existed according to Jehovah’s Witnesses’ beliefs, then Ed and I wouldn’t “qualify” because we were never Jehovah’s Witnesses to begin with. We would go to hell. And neither would our dad qualify, and heck, my mom hasn’t converted a single person yet, so she probably wouldn’t have made the 144,000 person cut off, either! But at least our mom thinks Ed is a good enough person so that he could be resurrected, so that thought was kind of comforting.

She said to me that since Ed has passed, she has seen him in dreams only twice. I told her he comes to visit me at least a couple times a month since he passed. She expressed half surprise, half envy.

“He comes to visit you… in New York?” my mom said to me, confused. “But how doe he know the way to get there? He could get lost.”

Even in dream life, in the after life, in heaven — wherever my sweet, innocent brother continues to live another form of life, our mother continues to worry about him. After death, he still lives somewhere out there, and because she knows this, she continues not just to pray for him, but to worry if he is safe, happy, and at peace… and if he won’t get lost on the way to New York to visit me.

What our mother doesn’t realize is that now wherever her son is, Ed can’t get lost. He cannot be in danger. He can’t feel pain, and all he can do is feel peace and be happy. That’s why every time I see him now, he’s always the happy one, and I am the one crying and sobbing when I see him. I really should be happier when I see him in dreams, but I can’t because I am selfish. I miss him in this life where I am, where I live. In his new world, he has found peace and happiness. It is a daily struggle to accept and for me to be at peace with his peace.

 

 

Secret revealed

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I finally asked my mom today if she was going to tell her two friends from Hawaii coming to the wedding that Ed isn’t here anymore. I’ve been avoiding asking her in fear that she might lash out at me, but she actually seemed very thoughtful when she responded. She said that they will be visiting the Bay Area before the wedding and that she’d talk to them then about it. She even acknowledged how important it was that they know before the wedding. I am slightly in shock we agreed on this so quickly and easily.

A wedding without my brother is getting closer by the day and more real by the minute. I hope that he will be watching over us.

Dessert selection

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Last night, I was going over dessert selections for our wedding and deciding what sweets we wanted to offer. We tasted a number of options that we liked during our visit to Southern California last month, and it will definitely be a tough decision to finalize which ones we want to move forward with. As I was going over the selection and the costs, I found myself thinking about Ed and which ones he would want the most. He always like fruit filled desserts as well as chocolate anything, so as long as that was on the table, he’d be happy and satisfied. I thought about the chocolate mousse with raspberries we tasted and how much he would have loved that, and the oreo and s’more items we tried. The list is endless of the things he would have enjoyed and have been excited about if he were here.

It makes me sad to plan this and know that as each day goes by, we get closer to the big day when he will not be there to enjoy and celebrate with us. I thought about when I have thought about him during this process, and it tends always to be at moments when I am happy or excited about something. I rarely think about him when drama arises with my aunt or my cousins, or when friends or family have made up bullshit reasons for not coming. My brother would have been there no matter what; that’s what siblings do for you. They’re not like your flaky friends from high school or your cousins who say they look at you like you’re siblings, but in practice do not at all, only when it’s convenient for them. Siblings make each other their priority in life; they are extensions of yourselves. if you fail your sibling, you are failing yourself. The sad thing is, this doesn’t apply to my dad or his siblings, but with Ed and me, this was very true. And that makes me even sadder to know he won’t be there for this day.

Sweater dress

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This morning , I watched my mom get ready for her Sunday morning JW church service, and I noticed this very attractive beige-grey sweater dress she was wearing. It was very stylish and figure flattering, and frankly, very unlike anything else she owns. Fashion and wearing matching clothes are not my mother’s strengths. She insists fashion doesn’t matter and that she’s old so it’s not important to look good, which I am always debating with her about. I always encourage her; she refuses to listen.

“That’s a really nice dress,” I said to her as she put on her earrings. “When did you get it? It looks good on you.”

She half smiles and looks hesitant. “Ed got it for me… just a few months before he died,” my mom said to me. Her eyes looked down. “He bought this for me and these special shoes for my wide feet just before he died.”

It didn’t help that death was on my mind this morning because I was getting ready to leave for a friend’s friend’s dad’s funeral, but I immediately felt choked up. The first nice thing I see my mother wearing in a long time, and lo and behold, it’s from my brother. Ed always did have good taste in clothes. There were even times in the past when he told me that I didn’t dress well enough and I needed to step it up.

“Don’t say anything else about this dress or anything to me,” my mom says while turning away. “If I say anymore, I’m going to start crying.”

That’s what we do. We just repress our feelings. It hurts too much to have feelings and show them sometimes.

So many dishes

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I woke up early this morning to the sound of my mother doing chores in the kitchen. The faint sound of her step is unmistakable, as is the clashing sound of dishes hitting each other in this house for me. I walked into the kitchen, and multiple piles of dirty dishes had somehow already accumulated and lined the entire counter top. Only two people live in this house… two people, so how the heck are so many dishes possibly generated before 7am?! This isn’t even due to making complex, multi-step dishes… this is simply from making a bowl of oatmeal and reheating leftover food. Something is seriously wrong here.

When Chris and I are at home, we never have that many dishes just from reheating food. There’s no logic to this mess. When I told my mom that I didn’t understand why there were so many dishes, she shakes her head and simply says, “You just don’t know.” Thanks.

I watched her move around the kitchen, doing lots of busy work that was really repetitive and unnecessary. She bangs things about when she wants attention and to seem as though she is working hard to prepare my dad or me food. It was clear that she was just making up more work for herself to do when there was nothing left to do; she just wants to keep herself seeming like she is busy. She dirtied dishes just by dropping a dirty spoon into a clean pot, and there you go! Another pot needs to be washed now!

We ate breakfast together, and I didn’t pour myself a cup of milk and just sat and ate because I was in a rush to get back to my computer. She noticed I had no milk on the table as we ate, and she said to me in a cold tone, “You know, you can’t expect me to get you your milk when you work from home. It’s all there for you to take care of yourself. You have to stand up and do things on your own and not rely on me.”

(??????).

 

Cousins reunited

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Yesterday, Chris and I met up with my dad’s younger sister’s son, who is estranged from his mother and whom I have not seen in almost nine years since another cousin’s wedding in the summer of 2007. He’s my cousin, likely my most normal, rational cousin. We didn’t grow up close because his mother, my aunt, wanted to shield him from our side of the family, but since his dad passed away in 2012 and my Ed passed in 2013, we’ve communicated a lot over e-mail and text, and we’ve gotten to know each other quite a bit. We’ve bonded over our familial dysfunction, our relationships with our respective mothers, and the loss of his father and my brother. We share a lot of despondency and a lot of confusion and anger regarding the family life we’ve experienced. It was refreshing to be having lunch with a cousin who isn’t selfish, can speak for himself and have his own opinions, and does not purposely ignore all the very real and raw problems our family causes and continues to face.

I felt sad when we left him, his wife, and his baby son at the end and drove off. He’s the person I wish I had access to growing up, who I wish Ed and I had the opportunity to get to know and get close to. This cousin is real. He’s normal, he has thoughts and frustrations that are just like Ed’s and mine.. or just like mine now that Ed is sadly gone. he doesn’t ignore the blatant issues in the family. He doesn’t make everything about himself and his own needs. I felt so sad when he told me that he may not stay for our entire wedding due to not wanting to cause a scene with his mother when she finally sees him after years of no contact of any sort. We both know she’s very capable of causing a big scene and making the event all about her instead of our marriage.

I feel so torn. My family always makes things harder for me, even at my own wedding.