My life stories - Part 7
Stories from my past memories - childhood, family, friends, growing up, poverty, integrity, dreams come true, finding peace and happiness, Buddhism, Yoga, and now...
(Updated November 2020)
Though my mother had passed away many years ago, my father still
missed her very much. He felt guilty for my mother had passed away in
the hospital, alone, without any of us being with her at that moment. He
regretted deeply and blamed himself for not being there for my mother
when she took her last breath. He strongly believed that my mother might
have something to say to him before she died. But then and forever, he
would never know what my mother wanted to say to him before she died.
My mother was paralyzed during the last two and a half years of her life. She
needed special care and attention from my father and my sister to help
her in everything from feeding herself to going to the toilet, and
bringing her to the hospital and traditional Chinese acupuncture centre
for check-up and receiving treatment for a few times every week.
Not long after my mother’s death, my father was paralyzed too and had
to lie in bed most of the time. The only wish he had, was waiting for
my mother to appear in his dream. Every day and night he just wanted to
sleep and sleep, hoping that my mother would show up in his dream and
talk to him. But he didn’t get to see her. Every time when I visited
him, he cried while telling me that my mother didn’t show up in his
dream. In great disappointment, he asked me why he couldn’t see my
mother in his dream. Another thing that he kept blaming himself is for
being impatient and shouted at my mother when she needed his care and
support.
It wasn’t easy to look after a paralyzed person twenty four hours a
day. Everyone became impatient, exhausted and frustrated. My mother had
no choice but to depend on my father and my sister to be her hands and
legs for everything. It was very hard for a person like my mother who
used to be very independent and physically strong, but suddenly she lost
all her mobility and freedom to do even the simplest thing. It wasn’t
easy for the person who needed help and the person who helped.
I can never complain about how my father, my sister and her two
daughters for being impatient and shouted at my mother frequently when
they lost their patience being exhausted from taking care of a paralyzed
person. Everyone was tired and frustrated. I can understand that. The
person who was sick was suffering. The people who cared for the sick
person were suffering too.
I felt compassion for my mother for being paralyzed because nobody
would want to be in such condition, being helpless and losing one’s
strength and mobility. I sympathized with my father, my sister and her
daughters, for being trapped in a situation which nobody would like to
be in. Nobody would enjoy spending many hours looking after a paralyzed
person who needed so much personal care and attention. I commiserated
with my two elder brothers who blamed themselves and feeling bad and
guilty for not being able to help out financially. I felt sorry for
myself for not being able to be there for my parents all the time
because I had to be at somewhere else making a living to provide
financial support for the entire family.
And then, my father was also having the same difficult condition as my mother had.
Because of the deep sadness from missing my mother, my father refused
to get better. He didn’t want to go for physiotherapy or receive any
kind of treatment. He gave up living from the moment he regained
consciousness and realized he had lost his mobility. It’s more than ten
years he had been paralyzed and he passed away on the 30th of December 2017.
My eldest brother, who had also passed away on the 30th of
June 2018, was looking after my father for many years. He would bring
my father to sit up on the wheelchair for eating and showering, but my
father couldn’t stay in a sitting position for too long. In the
beginning, my brother brought my father out of the house with his car,
to eat out and to get some fresh air and looking around at the outside
world. But then my father became very weak and had to lie down most of
the time because his body would be in pain for sitting too long. Since
then, he seldom got out from the house for many years, except when my
brother sent him for routine check-ups in the hospital once every three
months.
My father was feeling unwell in the morning the day that he got
paralyzed. He was helping my sister to move some heavy things when he
felt sudden unusual pain in his arm. My sister brought him to the
hospital for a check-up. The doctor told my sister that my father had to
stay back in the hospital until late afternoon for observation and
running some tests. My sister went back home to look after her daughters
and she would go back to the hospital to pick him up later in the
afternoon. During the check-up, a nurse asked him to sit up on the bed
to perform some physical movements. Somehow he lost his balance and fell
onto the floor from the bed with his head hit the floor first. He lost
consciousness and they sent him to the Emergency Unit. He went into a
coma. They informed my sister and told her that my father went into a
coma and was sent to the ICU. There was nothing they could do, they
said. Immediately my sister went back to the hospital while informing
everyone in the family. My father regained consciousness many hours
later, but half of his body was paralyzed. The doctor explained that
there were three blood clots in his head that caused the paralysis. We
didn’t know whether the blood clots were caused by the fall, or they had
already existed before the fall. We couldn’t undo anything, even if it
was somebody’s negligence and responsibility for what had happened to
him.
The staff at the hospital didn’t mention anything about why he had
been sent to the ICU. It was my father who told us later about what had
happened to him on that day.
My sister thought of getting some compensation money by suing the
hospital and the nurse. I told my sister that it was needless to sue
anyone. It would do more harm to my father than to benefit him, as it
would be a very long and stressful process for my father to go through
if this went into a court case. I also believed that the nurse didn’t
have intention for my father to fall down from the bed. Nobody
intentionally wanted this to happen. The nurse might have felt very bad
for this incident. Moreover, there was no other witness that could
support whatever my father told us about what had happened to him that
day, and my father’s memories were a bit confused after he suffered from
paralysis. Even if we successfully sued the hospital or the nurse and
got some compensation many years later, it still wouldn’t change the
fact that my father was paralyzed and wouldn’t get any better. We should
forgive and let go. One day this nurse might become a great nurse or a
great person learning from this incident. We didn’t want to ruin
somebody’s life with the possibility for becoming a great person.
Someone’s life was already ruined and couldn’t be undone. Everyone makes
some mistakes at some points in life. We didn’t want the nurse to be
unhappy and have no peace for the rest of his life. Even if it was
really the nurse’s negligence or responsibility for my father’s
unfortunate condition, we would like him to know that we had pardoned
him. It was an accident.
I have been supporting my family financially since I was a teenager.
My second elder brother has been suffering from asthma since he was a
baby. He couldn’t do much physical activities and didn’t have a
permanent job to support his own living. In the past, he would need to
borrow money from me from time to time to have food on the table. My
sister was in great debt with many different banks, relatives and
friends, and needed to look after her own family with two daughters and
three grandchildren from two separate broken families. My eldest brother
couldn’t work because he had been looking after my father twenty four
hours a day. Therefore I had to support my father and my eldest brother
financially.
Though my eldest brother loved his wife very much, they had to live
separately for all these years because in the past she had to live with
her family to look after her father who was very ill for some time
before he died, and then, she had to take care of her old mother too.
They could only see each other once or twice a month as they were living
more than 120 km away from one another. It’s a sad and unfortunate life
story of our family. But my brother never complained. He took good care
of my father out of love. I am glad that my father had such wonderful
son to look after him, and I’m always thankful to my brother for
sacrificing so much for our family.
I needed to be able to look after myself so that I can look after my
family. I never worry or regret. Worrying and regretting won’t change
anything. It wouldn’t take away my father’s suffering or make my
family’s difficult condition to become better. Instead, I used my entire
energy to practice and teach yoga to help myself and others, to be free
from ignorance and suffering, and have love and peace in us while
living in the world of impermanence and uncertainty. My family also
needed help. But nobody can help another if people don’t want to help
themselves.
More than twenty three years ago, my parents were living with me
before they moved out to live with my sister. After my late
brother-in-law passed away in a tragic work accident, my sister had
moved to Senawang where she found a job as an administrative clerk near
where she lived. Senawang is a small industrial town with plenty
greenery about an hour drive from Kuala Lumpur. She always wanted to
live in a house close to the countryside where she could see the
mountains and the big blue sky from her house.
Because of her two young daughters were studying in schools near my
house in Old Klang Road, she didn’t bring her daughters to live with
her. If she brought her daughters with her, she would have to pay
someone to look after the children when she’s at work. Her monthly
salary wasn’t much. She couldn’t afford to hire a nanny. She also had to
pay back a lot of debts little by little every month. So she left her
two daughters with us – my parents and I, to look after them. If she had
some money left, she would give a few hundred Ringgit to my parents for
her daughters’ daily living expenses.
My sister is very different from me. All I want is a simple, quiet
life. She wants to make a lot of money. She wants to have big house, big
car and enjoy life. She wanted to invest in property, so she bought a
house and a shop lot. She wanted to invest in life insurance, so she
bought eight life insurance policies at one time. She wanted to go for
holidays staying in nice hotel pampering herself once in a while. And
she would use her many different credit cards to pay for everything that
she wanted – house installments, car installments, insurance premiums,
holidays, petrol, grocery shopping, dining, and lots of bills. She
didn’t realize that her ambitions were too many and too big, and she
ended up accumulating more and more debts. But my sister isn’t a bad
person.
She is a very kind and friendly person. She won’t have any bad
intentions for anybody. She is a person with great patience and wouldn’t
get angry under any circumstances, except when she was too tired from
looking after my mother, she lost her patience and shouted at my mother a
few times. But I know she would feel very bad afterwards, as she would
never want to intentionally hurt anyone’s feelings. She wanted to
provide my parents with a better living condition. She wanted to give
her daughters the best that she could give. All she wanted was to have a
better quality of life. It’s totally nothing wrong with all her
ambitions, but life was so hard on her all the time.
She was a member of the Red Crescent Movement and had helped many
people everywhere while she was still in school. She continued to help
many people after she finished school. She lost her own handbag many
times, when she tried to help people who were injured in car accidents.
She is a very good friend to many people. She was very intelligent and
had very good results in school exams. She was one of the last batch
students who received Malaysian general education in English medium. She
reads and writes and speaks good English. She is a bookworm. She used
to sing a lot and played a guitar when she was younger. She was a happy
and carefree person.
But, all these good and positive qualities don’t guarantee that she wouldn’t be getting into financial problems.
Her elder daughter was a problem child. We couldn’t blame her. She
had a very unpleasant toddler-hood before her father passed away when
she was four years old. She had been frequently shouted at and canned by
her father since she was just a few months old. One time, he slapped
her for crying. He hit her so hard in the face that she permanently lost
the hearing in one ear. Her jaw was dislocated as well causing her
mouth tilted to one side when she talked. It wasn’t a bad thing for her
and her baby sister who was five months old when their father died in
the work accident.
Somehow she liked to tell lies and had been stealing money since she
was just a little girl. One day, I found out that my one and only fifty
Ringgit note had been missing from my purse. I used to count how much
money I had every day and knew exactly how many notes and coins in my
purse, as I didn’t have much money left for myself after giving most of
my money to my family. And I knew for sure that I had one piece of fifty
Ringgit note in my purse, but it had disappeared.
I was very upset. I was very sure that it must be her who had taken
it, as it wasn’t the first time she took money without asking. I
couldn’t control my anger. I was different from my sister. I would get
angry and wasn’t a nice person at all. I felt really upset that we had
been taking care of her and her little sister, but that was what she
repaid us. At that stage, I was very ignorant and unhappy. I was very
angry with the difficult financial situation in my family and didn’t
have the wisdom and compassion to control my anger and my behavior. My
mind was over-powered by ignorance and unhappiness.
I got really, really angry. I shouted at her madly. I told her that I
was going to call the police to send her to jail. She was just a nine
year old little girl at that time. I realized later in life that I was
too harsh on her. I had to forgive myself as I couldn’t undo what I had
done which I shouldn’t.
In the beginning, she kept shaking her head and denied that she had stolen the money.
She was very famous for her stubbornness. One time, her school
teacher punished her for something that she did at school. The teacher
gave her a stroke of caning on her palm. Other children would have cried
in pain, pull their hand away and asked for pardon. But she didn’t
retreat her hand, she didn’t cry and didn’t apologize. The teacher
became more furious and gave her a few more strokes and hit harder and
harder each time. She still wouldn’t retreat her hand and wouldn’t cry.
The teacher gave another few more strokes until her palm started to
bleed. Then the teacher stopped. She still didn’t cry.
She came home with the injured palm, swollen and bleeding. My parents
found out what had happened to her, and went to the school to complain
to the school principal. Immediately after that day, the teacher was
sent to another school to teach. The entire school knew about this. And
she became famous for her stubbornness.
After a few times of questioning with me shouting at her like a mad
person, she went out in silence. A few minutes later, she came back with
some money in a plastic bag. She already spent some of the fifty
Ringgit. She kept the remaining money in the plastic bag and hid it
under one of the flower pots down stairs.
I was really disappointed. Immediately I called my sister. I told her
that she must came right away to take her daughter back with her to
Senawang. I didn’t want her to live with us anymore. I was such
cold-hearted, uncompassionate and unforgiving. About one and a half
hours later, my sister came. She said she needed some time to arrange
her daughter to go to a school in Senawang. I said to her, I could wait
for another few days or a few weeks, as long as I didn’t want her
daughter to live with us anymore. I didn’t mind that her younger
daughter to continue to stay with us and I didn’t mind looking after
her.
My parents were very upset. They loved me very much. They knew that I
worked very hard to provide financial support for the family. They
didn’t want me to be unhappy. They also loved their grandchildren very
much. They couldn’t bear the pain being separated from one of their
grandchildren. They sympathized with my sister that she had to look
after her daughter on her own while she also needed to work. They
sympathized with their granddaughter that she wouldn’t get as much love
and attention as she could get from them and also be separated from her
young sister, if she would have to live with my sister. And so, my
parents made a very hard decision. My father decided to move to Senawang
to live with my sister to take care of their elder granddaughter. While
my mother would live with me and take care of their younger
granddaughter. My parents had to live separately since then. They
travelled back and forth between Kuala Lumpur and Senawang every week to
be with each other. And all these were because of me and my bad temper.
And yet, my parents never said anything bad about me.
Every weekend, my mother would drive to Senawang to see my father and
their elder granddaughter. Sometimes my father would come back to see
my mother and their younger granddaughter, and me, of course. This was
going on for some time. Two years later, it was time for my younger
niece to enter primary school. They decided that the easiest way for
everybody, was to send her to the school in Senawang which her sister
went to. Therefore, my mother also moved to Senawang to reunite with my
father and both their granddaughters for good. And the two
granddaughters were no longer be separated from each other and were
living together with their mother under the same house.
My sister moved away from Kuala Lumpur hoping for a brighter and
happier future, but it seemed like life didn’t want to be easy on her.
Now, she doesn’t have the house or the shop lot anymore because the bank
had auctioned off both her house and shop lot to pay back the huge
amount of debt she owed to the bank.
While living with my sister, my parents continued to help her to
clean up the house, did the cooking, gardening, washing the laundry for
everyone and sending the children to school. My sister thought that she
didn’t need to give any money to my parents for looking after her
children, but instead, she thought that my parents should contribute
some money, or pay her back by doing the house works and to serve her
and her children, because my parents were living at her house.
I was totally speechless.
This didn’t make sense at all. While her children were living with us
and my parents had to take care of them, she would give some money to
my parents for taking care of her children and for feeding them. But
when my parents were doing the same thing for her, but living in her
house, and had to do more house work, and yet, my parents had to
contribute money for being the servants of the house? If somebody hired a
helper to do some house work, the helper would get to live in the
house, would be fed and paid accordingly. It’s like telling the servant,
“Since you are living and eating in my house, so you should give me
some money and do all the house work in exchange.”
My parents never saw it as working for my sister when they look after
the children and did all the house work for her. My parents loved their
daughter and granddaughters. Out of love, my parents wanted to take
care of them and do everything for them. For my parents, they did
everything for us out of love, family love. Family never calculate how
much we give and we don’t expect anything in return. But somehow their
daughter took this love for granted. But yet, they didn’t mind at all. I
totally understood my parents’ hearts, what were they thinking and
feeling at that time.
I felt that it was unfair to my parents to do so much for my sister,
but they were being treated like free servants, and had to pay for their
stay in my sister house for food and accommodation. But, I respect
their freedom to do what they wanted to do. They were happy giving all
that they could give to my sister. My parents sympathized my sister had
lost her husband and had to bring up two young children all by herself.
It was very difficult for my sister to work and look after the children
at the same time. I could understand that.
My parents had the freedom on how they wanted to use the money that I
gave them every month. I couldn’t and shouldn’t dictate how they should
spend their pocket money although it was coming from me. Once I gave
away the money, it’s up to them about how they wanted to use it. But I
convinced my parents that they didn’t need to tell my sister how much
money that I gave them every month because I knew my sister would
‘borrow’ all the money that they had, and spent the money recklessly.
They listened to me. They received the money from me every month without
telling my sister how much I gave them, but they continued to help out
my sister’s living expenses silently with their pocket money, without
letting her knew about it. How great was that parents’ love!
Sometimes my sister didn’t have enough money to get the daily needs.
And hence, my parents were using their own pocket money to do the
grocery shopping without telling my sister that the petty cash for
grocery shopping had finished, because they didn’t want my sister to get
stressed out. This was how much our parents love us. They gave
everything and never asked anything in return.
Though my parents showed lots of love and care to their
granddaughters, they didn’t respect my parents at all. They shouted at
my parents, especially to my mother after she was paralyzed. They
ignored my mother when she asked them for something. When my sister
didn’t have enough money to give to her daughters for their schooling
expenses and daily pocket money, my parents would give their own pocket
money to their granddaughters. But they didn’t know how to be grateful
and thankful. Again, my parents didn’t mind at all. Sometimes they would
cry in front of me and told me about what happened to them in my
sister’s home. That was how I learned about what my parents had been
going through while living with my sister.
There was a time, my parents had almost finished using their pocket
money and my sister hadn’t been giving them money to buy rice and
vegetables for some time. Every day she went out to work in the early
morning and came home after midnight because she had another part time
job as a guest relation officer in a karaoke night club in Seremban. She
didn’t realize my parents hadn’t been cooking for a few days. My
parents didn’t want to trouble me and didn’t tell me that they were
running out of money. They didn’t want to ask money from my sister as
well because they knew my sister already had no money to pay bills and
all her installments for months. They didn’t tell my sister that there
was no more rice in the house. They gave the scarce money that they had
to their granddaughters to allow them to buy food at school, and my
parents had been eating stale bread for many days, until I gave them
their next pocket money. I had been giving them enough money for their
living, but they spent all their money for their grandchildren and my
sister. And they had to eat stale bread for many days instead. I felt so
sad, so sad for my parents. And angry as well.
Many years had passed by, but my sister’s elder daughter didn’t get
any better or wiser. She became worse. She couldn’t stop telling lies
and stealing. One day she stole her friend’s ATM card and took out lots
of money from her friend’s savings account. She bought many dresses,
shoes and bags. She came home with all these new things, and told my
parents and her mother that she had a rich boyfriend who bought her all
these things. Sometimes she also brought some presents back for my
sister, my parents and her sister, to show that she loved and cared for
the family. She was only fourteen years old at that time. But my parents
and my sister didn’t suspect anything.
Until one day, her friend’s mother found out that it was my niece who
had been stealing her daughter’s money and came to see my sister and my
father, and threatened to call the police. My father panicked. He cried
and knelt down and begged to the woman not to call the police. He was
afraid that his grandchild would be filed criminal record and wouldn’t
have a future anymore. It’s a huge humiliation for a man to kneel down
to a woman and beg for spareness. My sister also made a promise to the
woman that she would slowly pay back all the stolen money. It was a huge
amount for my sister as she already didn’t make enough money for living
and she had lots of debts at that time. The woman sympathized with my
sister’s situation and was moved by my father’s love for his grandchild,
and therefore she agreed that she wouldn’t report to the police.
I believe that my niece wasn’t really bad. It wasn’t right to steal
and couldn’t be excused under any circumstances. But I knew that she did
it partly was because she was frustrated with the unfortunate and
difficult condition of this family. There was always not enough money
for food and for living, not to say to have any leisure and material
enjoyments like what her friends had. She had been teased by her
classmates for not having a father and living in poverty. She also
wanted to be nice to the family and to be able to give something back to
the family, to help out financially. But she went to the wrong way to
get what she wanted.
My niece didn’t learn from this incident. She ended up getting
pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl when she was sixteen years old.
She didn’t even know that she was pregnant when she hadn’t been
menstruating for more than four months. One day she felt sick and went
to the hospital to seek doctor’s consultation and found out that she was
pregnant. She broke up with the baby girl’s father not long after the
baby girl was born, and went out with some other men. And now, my niece
has two more young children from a relationship with a young man who
didn’t want to accept her elder daughter from the previous relationship.
Anyway, their relationship didn’t turn out well. And so, my sister has
to look after these two young grandchildren who were very unhappy being
caught up in a broken family.
When my niece gave birth to her first baby girl, my sister was very
happy to be a grandmother. So as my parents were very happy to be
great-grandparents. They loved this great-grandchild so much. This baby
girl certainly brought some joys into this family after they had been
struggling with financial problems for a very long time. After her
delivery, my niece didn’t know how to take care of a baby. Therefore, my
sister became the baby’s full time nanny.
When this baby girl came into the family, it brought some relief and
happiness to everyone, especially for my mother. She felt so happy
seeing her great-grandchild. When she was looking at this little baby
girl, her sadness from suffering paralysis and being shouted at by her
husband, her daughter and the two grandchildren were all gone. My mother
would cry when she told me about how she was being treated when I
wasn’t there, but she would smile when she talked about her
great-grandchild. It was her happiest moments in the last two months of
her life.
On the 24th of December, 2006, my sister called me while I
was teaching my morning yoga class at home. She told me that our mother
had passed away in the hospital. The last time I saw my mother was a
few weeks before she died. In that final conversation which I had with
my mother in private, I told her that she didn’t need to worry for us
anymore, that she should let go. I told her that I love her very much,
as well as our entire family also love her very much. I also asked her
what she would like to do with her funeral. And she told me that she
wanted to be cremated and the funeral should be held in Kuala Lumpur, so
that her friends could come to see her for one last time. The last few
words that she told me were we should always give without expect
anything in return but we must repay others for being kind to us, and
always be humble and forgiving.
I told my sister over the phone about what our mother had told me. And we followed exactly what she wanted us to do.
I went to the hospital in Seremban with my brothers and my
sister-in-law. I saw my mother’s dead body lying on a table. She looked
so peaceful as if she was smiling. I held her hands and gently rubbed
her hands, her arms and her face with my fingers. I kissed her cheek and
forehead. Goodbye, mother. Thank you.
I didn’t cry. Not until a few months later, I started to cry. For all
the love that she gave me and to the family. Her wisdom and compassion.
Her patience and forbearance. Her forgiveness and generosity. I
realized how much I missed her then. But I had to let her go.
No matter what had happened in the past, who’s right, who’s wrong,
and who’d suffered most, I wish my family love and peace, and be able to
forgive and let go. Forgive ourselves and others for being imperfect.
Forgive life wasn’t as easy as how we would like it to be.
Life was never easy for me and my family, but I learned to be grateful, thankful and content. I learned to forgive and let go. I learned to be happy no matter what. And love unconditionally.
Posts
