Happy mother's day

Before we stop to think how commercial this whole Mother's Day issue is, let us say a big thank you to all the Mothers out there. And I'm not going to think how Mother's Day is commercial because although we should love our mother's every other day, we're only human and we tend to remember things only when they're in bright neon letters out big signs in front of us, and even then we do forget.

My grandmother's turning 80 soon too. It takes a lot of luck to live till you're 80. As I've so often thought, at this point, how do you look to tomorrow? It's more like restraining the dark before it comes over you. And even then, there's the inevitable wavering of the faith, or if hell is a much larger space than you used to think it would be.

At 80, do you ponder over regret as much as you do over 18? At 18, you wished you were a lot of things, popular, well versed in languages, sporty, atheltic and sexy, or the best damn software programmer there was. At 80, do you regret these things? Oh damn I shouldn't have run that bakery for 55 years. I should have run away with that Dutch guy when I had the chance. Or do you think, "does it really matter, I'm going to die anyway."

I've been rather fortunate. I haven't seen much death in front of my eyes. What I have seen of it disquieting enough for my own purposes, which is why I never could envisage myself being a doctor, dealing with death every day. It seems to me like dying in old age is losing the shell you've built for your body over the years and retiring into the blabbering mass you were when you were spit out of the womb. Incontinence, incoherence, and the dissipating of memories except for the most unimportant or important bits. The lost loves you try so hard to invoke. You're desperately trying to read the Chinese newspaper for him so he has something to listen to, to read, to fill his mind other than the dwelling thoughts of death or the anachronistic mumblings of a bygone era. But the damn news doesn't matter to him any more! And as he dies, he has to fulfill the responsibilities of a dying man. Contrition, exulting the grandchildren to study hard and become good people, having a last birthday devoid of meaning but the fact of a little joy brought to the rest of the family. And as a person, having to sit through it all, witness a farce that is not the making of society, or any of the family, or anything, just this farce of having to die, having to give up everything that's incomplete, to return to a better place, or a worse one, and who knows?

that's maybe feeling. it isn't enough to make you cry at funerals(because you're weeping for loss), but it's enough to make you scared and stiff shitless. feeling young, wanting to be young and telling yourself that it won't be the same mistakes you make and that you will die with joy or at least dignity.

it never really was your fault. i'd like to think you turned into a butterfly or some moth after you died or even the aggregation of good words at your eulogy. you couldn't have been the wrinkled person, weakened, preserved with a bible tucked into your arm. that, i couldn't love.