His other grandma

The Dummy
The Dummy
Nov 6 · 9 min read
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

R loves his grandma. You can tell.

J has a video of him bouncing on her knee. He’s on his feet, with Granny D’s hands under his armpits keeping him steady. And he’s laughing.

No, he’s not laughing. He’s cackling.

She’s singing a song or a nursery rhyme I’d never heard of, and the little guy just has the biggest look of joy on his little face.

R can be a tough audience. He’ll give you a smile, but you have to work for it. And a cackle… well, that takes something special. Or someone special.

The last time his Granny D and his Poppy came to visit, after they left, R was grumpy for about three days. “Back to boring old Mum and Papa,” he seemed to say to us.

Granny D is J’s mum, and the relationship that she and R has, even at his young age, and even as she lives in another state, is beautiful to watch.

And I am so grateful that she’s in his life. Because R, unfortunately, only gets to have one grandma.

And he should have two.

R should have another grandma to spoil him; to dote on him; to love him unconditionally; to make him cackle with a song.

R should have gotten to know my mum — his Oma. Not out of some strict belief in traditional family structures, but because Mama was a beautiful soul, and R’s life would be just that little bit richer from having her in it.


The last time I spoke to Mama, I knew it would be the last time. She knew too. That night, her closest family members had come to the hospital to be with her. We joined hands and prayed.

It’s funny. I used to argue with her all the time that prayer is a philosophical paradox. When you pray, you’re meant to ask for things. But if you don’t get what you asked for, then it’s because you weren’t meant to have it. So what’s the point in asking?

But logic really has no place at times like these. Prayer gave Mama comfort the way that none of our own words ever could. And comfort was all I wanted for her.

As everyone left for the night, I stayed back a little longer. I can’t remember now what we talked about the rest of the night. Maybe I was telling her about my plans to propose to J. Or maybe that was another night. I just wanted her to know that I was going to be OK.

I know I did tell her that I’d miss her. I told her that I was sorry I wasn’t a better son. And I told her that I love her. Because God knows I never told her that enough when she wasn’t dying.

When she fell asleep, I left the hospital and stopped by Coles on the way home to get a frozen pizza. I was starving.

My phone had died on my drive home and even when I plugged it in to recharge, I didn’t turn it back on for a while. Maybe it was because I just wanted a break from the rest of the world. Or maybe it was because I knew that no good news could come from my phone that night.

So I popped the pizza into the oven and just sat on my couch.

I would find out a little later that I had missed two calls during this time: one from the hospital, and another from my brother.

The nurses had not been able to wake Mama up. She had fallen into a sort of catatonic state (I know that’s not what it was but I can’t remember the medical details of all that now). And she would never wake up again.

Mama would remain breathing for a while longer — long enough for me to drive back to the hospital. We were all there when she took her last breath, but by then my mother had been long gone.

She had gone home to her God at some point while my shitty $5 frozen supreme was heating up in the oven.


“To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
Oscar Wilde (sort of)

R is also missing an Opa. He died too.

And I’m not trying to undervalue the role of grandfathers here. R’s Poppy — J’s dad — is also great with him.

But Papa died a long time ago now. I was 11.

So he missed out on my high school years, my university years, me learning to drive, my first job, me learning guitar, me performing with said guitar, my first car, my first property, my wedding, and now, the birth of my son.

He’s missed out on a lot. And I was so young when he died that it’s hard for me to even think of him as a grandfather.

But my mum passed away a mere thirteen months before I got married and less than three years before R’s birth. So she just missed out.

And that still feels raw. That feels unusually cruel.

Papa died suddenly and relatively young.

He was a bit of a hero to the 11-year-old me. And his death came to define so much of who I was during my adolescence.

The loss was hard enough to move on from, but then years later I would be sad all over again when I realised that I couldn’t remember what his voice even sounded like anymore.

This year I celebrated Father’s Day for the first time since 1990.


In my late 20s, I moved back home to live with Mama. There was a break-up, a break-in and some cashflow problems that drove me to this end.

We mostly stayed out of each other’s way. Mama played the piano whenever she had any free time. I was often out. Or I was on my computer. We were like housemates.

But there were a few things we did together. We usually ate dinner together. She also gave me piano lessons (one of the handful of times I tried to learn the piano and failed). And we never missed an episode of Dancing with the Stars.

Looking back, it really was a wonderful time.

We talked about everything from religion to cooking to family gossip to speculating on who would be eliminated that week from Dancing with the Stars. We also talked a lot about her life before us, what her marriage to Papa was like and even her childhood during the war. Our relationship had grown from a mother-and-child to a mother-and-large-adult-son.

What was supposed to be a stop-gap (and strictly short-term) measure ended up extending to over a year.


As a parent, Mama was remarkable to me for the things that she didn’t do as much as the things she did do.

It’s funny, but thinking about my early childhood now, I remember Papa more clearly than I remember Mama. Sure, it might be because he died early and so all my memories of him are attached to those early years.

But it was also just a personality thing. Papa was a bigger personality. Mama, on the other hand, was always content to be in the background.

As I got older, she always let me be myself. She was proud of my achievements, but she never took credit for any of it. And she didn’t give me a hard time when I failed, either.

Defying all Asian mother stereotypes, Mama was certainly no tiger mum when it came to my schooling. She wanted me to do well, sure. But she never berated me about anything to do with school. In fact, one day, when I was in high school, she asked me what subjects I did. She said that her friends often compared and boasted about their children’s test scores. But she didn’t even know my subjects.

She trusted me. And, more importantly, she made me feel trusted.

After I finished uni, I had some trouble finding a first job (that’s what I get for studying psychology and philosophy). And one role I interviewed for was at a magazine that no longer exists and you’ve probably never heard of. I bought a copy of it and showed my mum.

The cover pointed to a collection of nude and semi-nude photos of readers’ wives. Another story was a pictorial that had a vague narrative of a cranky old sailor who gives orders to his young female deckhand. With each photograph, the deckhand loses more and more articles of clothing. At one point, she gets a spanking from her boss, and by the last photo, she’s completely naked.

At the interview, the guy asked me: “So are you really OK working with this kind of material?”

But my Asian and very Catholic mother flipped through the issue and calmly told me: “Well, it’s a job, and if it gives you an opportunity, then it’s an opportunity.”

As my siblings and I got older, Mama never gave us a hard time about getting married or giving her grandchildren. She just wanted us to be happy.

In a way, I think this makes the fact that she’s missed out on meeting R even more tragic.

Mama never judged. She always took whatever life gave her and she made the best of things. She never complained with what she got. She could laugh at herself, and she wasn’t easily embarrassed. She saw life as a gift to be cherished. Even if it can be rough sometimes.

This made her the most resilient person I’ve ever known.

Oh, and for the record, I never got that magazine job in the end.


A year before she died, Mama and I went on a road trip along a section of Route 66. We watched David Copperfield make a car disappear in Vegas, stayed at a snow-covered cabin at the edge of the Grand Canyon, stalked Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn’s (former) mansion in Palm Springs and ate at In-N-Out in LA. Turns out my mother loved burgers as much as I do.

On the trip, we had a chance to talk properly again, like when I was living with her. It was there that I first told her about J.

During our last few years, I saw Mama as not just my mum. But also a friend. Someone who I would never get tired talking to. Someone who I had infinite time for.

But the problem is, time isn’t infinite. I mean, you can look at moments in your life and each individual moment can be perfect, irrespective of time, but time dictates how many of those moments you get to have.

Mama was 40 when she had me. And now R and I are also 40 years apart. I am acutely aware of this. Of the downside of being an older parent. You’ll just have less time with your child. It’s simply a numbers thing.

But then, the relationship I had with my mum was a product of all factors being what they were: like all of Mama’s life experiences before I was born, the fact that I have an older brother and sister, plus the era I grew up in, etc.

And who knows, maybe our relationship could have been vastly different had any of those factors been different. Knowing everything that I know now, though, I wouldn’t change a single thing.

Similarly, I’m fairly confident that I’m more equipped at 40 than at any other time in my life to be the best dad to R.

And maybe I’m just saying all this to make myself feel better. Maybe. But that’s how I’ve chosen to look at it.

When I spoke to the doctor about Mama’s cancer, he said that she had had it for a while before it was discovered. I asked how long, and he said she may have even had it for over a year.

We didn’t know it at the time, of course, but Mama and I may have been holidaying on borrowed time.


A few weeks ago, I took R to Rookwood cemetery to visit my parents’ grave. They’re buried side by side in the Catholic section.

When you have a child, you can’t help but think about your own childhood. And your parents. You want to replicate the things they did that you liked. You want to avoid repeating the things you didn’t like about your childhood on your own child.

R’s Oma may not be around to hold him, play with him, sing to him. But at times like today, when he was in a room full of other babies and he’s just sitting back, content, and observing quietly the chaos around him, I think I see a bit of her in R.

I’m projecting, of course. I know that. But she is actually a part of him. Just as she will always be a part of me. And telling R about his Oma, and passing on her best qualities, since she can’t be here to do it herself, well… I guess that’s on me now.

The Dummy

Written by

The Dummy

A (very) new dad fumbling through fatherhood. He lives in Sydney with his wife J and his baby son R.

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