My Grandmother’s Wishes
I was reminded everyday by our family’s loss in the isolation of my mum’s depression and my grandpa’s uncomfortable indifference.
I slept in mum’s room that night as I often did, I was 12 years old and still terrified of the dark. At midnight I awoke to red and blue lights flashing outside our window, this was usually the time grandma came home from work and she’d knock at our door requesting we ate dinner with her. She would do this even on school night’s. Instead, at the front door stood a police man and grandpa, mum at her knees — howling. I don’t remember the journey to the morgue or even the journey back but the image of grandma lying there on the trolley has always tainted my memory of her. The days that led up to the funeral were a blur. The house was filled with family from all around the world, who had travelled to say their goodbye’s. I was kept distracted with the comfort of cousins and the noisiness of dinner time conversation, that I’d sometimes forget what we were gathered for. But when everyone had left to go home, I was reminded everyday by our family’s loss in the isolation of my mum’s depression and my grandpa’s uncomfortable indifference. Time dragged on and I had felt truly alone.
Mum and I moved to Australia when I was 3. It was extremely difficult for me to adapt, that I would hit my peers at school in frustration of not been understood. Because of this, I had many ‘attitude adjustment’ sessions with teachers to iron out my bad temperament. They’d end each session with an investigation of my home life and each time my anxious mum would attempt to relieve their suspicions. A neurotic and aggressive kid, it was obvious that this textbook attitude could only be cultivated by a poor home life but out of the two us, mum struggled the most. She was an absent parent and worked and studied for the better part of my childhood. In my late teens, it was only then that I would come to realise that she had done this out of sheer necessity, so that one day she could independently support our welfare. This sacrifice was made with the assurance that grandma and grandpa would step in to raise me and so I’d grow up, very much confused about our family unit, that it wasn’t until Grandma’s passing that my mother and I discovered an eternal gap in our relationship.
In Filipino culture, women are the governors of the family; the first teacher of the children, the treasurer of the home, the accountant, the laundrywoman and the cook. My grandma was all those things and more. It was her duty and her calling in life to provide and nurture but her method of doing so, cultivated a toxic codependence that certain members of our family have yet to learn that no one owes them a thing — despite sharing the same bloodline. It feels that my cousins and I are indebted to her efforts, the burden that she carried and left behind is now entrusted upon us, an expectation that we must justify her suffering.
If she were alive today, I’d shake some sense into her because it was precisely this reasoning that caused her to die. She worked as a cleaner in a corporate building and on the night of her passing, she suddenly collapsed and died of an aneurysm. Stress, high blood pressure, trauma — this accumulated over the course of her life and her stubborn denial got the better of her.
Upon my return to the motherland after 8 years, I had witnessed a certain level of entitlement that elders use to get their way — regardless of how well they treat you or in my case how well they know you.
“Remember I used to take care of you when you were this size” they’ll say as they ‘d gesture to the height of their knees.
Of course I don’t remember but it’s their way of telling me I cared for you once, perhaps throw some my way. Some are more direct than others.
“One day when your auntie is gone, it’ll be your turn to take care of us.”
“One day when you have money, you can buy me a car like that”.
These are all grown men who had made their attempts into coercing me to support their welfare by exploiting what is apparently commonly known as a Filipino value.
Am I too sensitive? Too western to truly understand?
“It was your grandmother, she spoon fed them and now they don’t know any better”, my auntie said one afternoon after expressing my confusion.
“You’re lucky you don’t have this life, you and your cousins didn’t have to sell candles all day to eat… It’s why they turn to you, the young ones, because you got the best out of the opportunities she gave. You made use of them. They took advantage and never made anything out of it. So don’t be too hard on them.”
“I guess grandma never taught them how because ironically, she didn’t know either” I’d say at last.
She nodded in confirmation and it made me feel guilty. The same guilt that I and my cousins shared when we’ve been schooled but still we were torn, did we need an attitude adjustment or did they? How could it be our responsibility to carry their load when we’ve only just grown a backbone? How could they have the right to demand support when we’ve only just begun to support ourselves?
It’s the Filipino way, was the only answer anyone could give me, as if it justifies years of trauma and resentment. As if grandma had collapsed and fallen to her death because of some cultural tradition, as if it were her moral code. Was it her wish to leave us this way? Was it her wish to leave us fighting over her will? I think not. I think she wanted us to realise her impending mortality, that just like money, could easily be spent.That as much as she could take on, it would eventually tire her down. That even though she promised to take care of everything, we could’ve offered to solve our own damn problems.
“The only thing you need to do is to focus on yourself” said mum.
It’s easy for me to do just that, an only child with no obligation to take care of siblings or to financially support our already stable and independent family. Even if we weren’t stable, we could rely on Medicare, Centrelink and bulk billed GP’s. In the Philippines you only ever had family to rely on for welfare and if you were lucky enough to have relatives in Western countries, it was only a means of survival to ask for allowance. And because you live in the ‘lucky country’, it’s only right you pay for your uncle’s basic needs.
But at what point do you draw the line? As compassionate and selfless as the concept may be, you ultimately must ask yourself when enough is enough. Specifically what are the rules and conditions of this compensation? Should there be any rules and conditions, after all it’s only a right of passage? How often and to what ordeal is worthy of financial support? These are worthy considerations that perhaps the next generation could find answers to. That it is not enough to rely on your older sister but to learn the value of independence, the importance of agency and the purpose of a work ethic, just as she had to do to support you. Perhaps this was grandma’s ultimate wish, that by her sacrifice we could begin to question the sense of our ways.
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