Note: today’s newsletter touches on some heavy topics, including death, grief and everything else in between.
Today would have been my mother’s 70th birthday.
And what better way to remember her today by having a slice of Cedele carrot cake (one of her favourites) and complaining about the price (which was also something she did a lot 😂)
One of the magical things about writing is that you can revisit your thoughts and almost recapture how you felt, what you thought about during a specific moment in time.
It’s funny reading this essay I wrote and published on Medium on April 9, 2019 (copied in full below).
Reading it now, nearly 5 years on - wow 2019 Joshua was in a rough place. And why wouldn’t I have been?
I was working full-time, planning my wedding and living with my parents; one of whom was slowly dying, and all I could do was spend time with them and try not to crumble in the meantime.
A snippet from my journal, 26 July 2019, 5 days before her passing
Thirdly, saw Dr with my parents today. As expected, everything is bad. Nothing has improved and it’s declining rapidly. Apparently bilirubin has more than tripled from 80 to about 300 since the last visit a month ago. He commented that my mum has lost a lot of weight and it’s really a very fast decline. It’s also scary cos if I compare it to a month ago, I swear it wasn’t this bad. Prognosis has been adjusted to about 1-2 months, so I guess I need to start preparing for the inevitable. I guess the term is really “optimise for happiness” right now. I keep saying that I feel like I aged 20 years in the past 6 months?
As they say, you never really stop grieving, do you? Even now I can recount the events of the day when we got the call she passed in the early morning. Or how funny it is to be hit with that same lurch of feelings while walking along the road to the hospice?
In 2019, I worried that I would forget about my mother after her death. The way she talked about things, the way she was an absolute Star Trek nerd, how she had a ruthless spirit for experimentation in the kitchen, how strong she was to juggle baking cakes, kueh lapis, pineapple tarts, and butter cake every single Lunar New Year to give to our extended family. There’s plenty more anecdotes on the list. How she sounded, how she smelt, every single mannerism.
And in some ways, some part of that has come true. Some of those memories are starting to blur. And honestly, I’m worried sometimes I’ll forget these details entirely.
But at the same time, there’s unexpected things that remind me of her. Random English-speaking aunties haggling prices hanging out at Peranakan eateries.
The absences remind me more though. Her passing altered the entire dynamic of both my family and extended family, and I’m not sure if we’ll ever recover from it. I guess all we can do is soldier on.
Maybe even the way I’ve taken up cooking over the last couple of years (baking is a frontier I still haven’t gone into proper yet), and how we enjoy hosting people at our house are ways her legacy lives on.
Yet sometimes it feels like a weird photocopy of the actual thing. We obviously have our own expression of my mum’s gifts, but on downer days they feel like pale imitations.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about grief, it’s this:
One, you never stop grieving. Grief shifts and changes. I’ve mostly made peace with my mum’s passing, but it’s still triggered here and there - especially around birthdays, Christmas season and Mother’s Day. Like this post I wrote on 24th December 2019, and why The Magic Circle is one of my favourite SingLit books.
Two, grief means the person means a lot to you. It’s still so hard to talk about your mother in the past tense, but in some ways it’s a reminder to celebrate life in whatever way or form.
Three, you’ll still miss the person. Whether it’s in photographs, revisiting old journal entries, or in sheer absences. Losing someone integral to a family reshapes the entire family unit and how you relate to different groups.
Four, 2019 was easily one of the darkest years of my life thus far, but I’m immensely grateful for the time I had to spend with both my parents.
Lastly, I miss you Mummy. I hope you’re still making merriment up there, making friends, cooking up a storm, selling ice to Eskimos and dreaming up business ideas every hour.
Happy 70th birthday.
My original essay: What I’ve learned from suddenly becoming a cancer caregiver - dated April 9, 2019, slightly over 2 months from my mum’s passing.
People react in three distinct ways when I tell them my mother has stage 4 liver cancer.
“I’m so sorry to hear that”, while their voices take on a hushed, grave quality — tones you reserve for the bedside of the dying.
Silence. Their brows furrow. I can almost hear their brain furiously churning; trying to figure out what to say next
“Stay strong” I’m sure it’ll get better and I hope she recovers soon. This group either glosses over the topic or suggest an endless list of remedies or things for me to do to make it better.
It’s not easy to figure out what to say next when I tell you that a loved one has cancer.
I get it.
Cancer is scary stuff and you’re worried about saying the wrong things to me.
But here’s the thing.
As a cancer caregiver, I am tired.
Between filling in roles at home to make sure things at home continue to run smoothly, keeping track of side effects, providing emotional support for my dad, ensuring everyone else in my family is coping with the situation and researching on how to get the correct meals and measures in place, I am tired.
Sometimes people think giving advice at the top of their voice in rapid succession is the best way to help.
Well, no.
I don’t want your pity.
I don’t want your solutions.
I don’t want you to add more things to my overflowing to-do list.
What I’m really looking for is someone to listen.
Create a safe space for me to share.
Support me by being there without judgment.
There’s a vastly understated strength in being still, tuning in to my words and just listening.
Sometimes, being silent makes the loudest impression.
Here’s the thing about battling cancer
Cancer changes your life.
Not just the life of the cancer patient, but everyone else around her.
Battling cancer is like fighting a long, drawn-out guerrilla war.
There are the regular search-and-destroy scans, where we search for new squads of cancer cells invading the body.
Once the cells are detected, doctors and nurses need to strategize and find the correct weapon to eradicate them. Except, they can only defeat the insurgents where you find them or where you think they may be.
After treatment, it seems these rogue cells have been destroyed. You wipe away the sweat on your brow and breathe a sigh of relief.
Mission accomplished, for now.
If only it was that easy.
If there is one single cancer cell left standing, THEY WILL CALL FOR REINFORCEMENTS. Give them a few months to recuperate and recharge and you bet they’ll be attacking once again.
You can win the battle, but will you win the war? This is a war that you won’t be able to withdraw from or choose not to fight.
The enemy is insidious, hardy and cunning.
The enemy is your own body.
As cancer physician, researcher and author Siddhartha Mukherjee says:
Cell division allows us as organisms to grow, to adapt, to recover, to repair — to live. And distorted and unleashed, it allows cancer cells to grow, to flourish, to adapt, to recover, and to repair — to live at the cost of our living. Cancer cells can grow faster, adapt better. They are more perfect versions of ourselves.”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies.
Then there are the effects of the cancer treatment on the body itself.
With cancer treatment comes side effects.
I can’t decide if cancer or cancer treatment is more heartbreaking to watch. After all, the essence of chemotherapy is using poison to kill those pesky cancer cells.
I see my mother undergoing brutal forms of treatment, trying to find a combination that is effective for her condition and her body can accept.
Throughout the countless blood tests, CT scans, procedures and oral meditations later, we started seeing the side effects.
It began with great red and purple welts sprouting on my mother’s feet. It became agonizing to walk. Her once purposeful and strong stride became a halting, stumbling gait.
Once energetic and buzzing with ideas, now she sleeps at every opportunity she gets.
Here’s the cruel irony — my mother might die from the cancer treatment rather than cancer itself.
It’s the kind of weakening that breaks every son’s (and daughter’s heart).
Regardless of age, to see your once strong and healthy mother being oh-so-slowly reduced to a shadow of her former self is something no child should ever desire to see.
I knew my mother would move mountains for me if she could.
I knew that my mother worked tirelessly for her children’s education and to provide for us at any given opportunity.
Now that she was struck with cancer mere months after her retirement seemed like a brutal irony.
I cursed cancer every opportunity I had. Why were we given such a burden to bear? Was there any point to continue with the treatment?
Taking care of a family member with cancer is like wandering around in a pitch-black cave.
You grasp against the slick earthen walls without a light, trying to determine the next few steps to take while fighting a growing sense of unease.
Are you blindly walking in circles? Did you take a detour that went completely in the wrong direction?
When will you see a semblance of light again?
You don’t know.
You don’t know if cancer will rear its ugly head again, or spread to another vital part of the body.
You don’t know if your mother will be alive in the next few months or in what state she will be in tomorrow.
As a direct family member, you’ll start questioning yourself.
Can I do more to best help the situation? How can I take care of my father while he watches his beloved wife of 40 years struggle through a long-drawn-out case of genetic civil war?
Oh, I’ve certainly grown up.
Recently, I attended a funeral wake for a friend’s mother.
She had died of end-stage pancreatic cancer.
It was like staring one of my worst fears in the eye. What if all these medication and efforts were for nothing? What if instead of curing my mother’s cancer, all these treatments merely worsened her condition and she was going to die anyway?
Maybe there is a bright side to all this.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who spent several years caring for patients during the last 12 weeks of their lives, routinely asked her patients about “any regrets they had or anything they would do differently.”
Third on that list of regrets is “wishing they had the courage to express their feelings”.
And maybe this experience has revealed to me how much I actually love my parents and given me the courage to express it regularly.
It’s funny how impending death changes your perspective on family and your parents.
As someone entering his late twenties, I have a future to look towards.
Growing and developing in my career and personal life.
Building a future with my fiancé.
Finding ways to give back to society.
It’s so easy to neglect my parents and even forget what they have sacrificed to raise me throughout all these years. But, while we look forward to navigating all these complex life challenges, our parents are getting older.
I’ve never seen my mother so frail before.
And my father, usually so strong and silent with a plan for everything, now looks so despondent. He tries to hide it from me and insists nothing is wrong, but the cracks and emotional stress still show.
It’s heartbreaking.
Maybe I’ve always thought of my parents as constant, indestructible figures in my life. Whatever I or life has thrown at them, they have managed to figure out.
But, over the months that I’ve spent more time at home with my parents, I’ve learned a lot more about their lives than what I’ve learned over the past 28 years.
I found out that my father proposed to my mother on a beach at sunset in Malaysia. I learned they met each other at college and dated for 7 years before getting married.
Maybe there is an unexpected gift in this entire cancer experience.
As I grow older, my relationship with my parents has changed.
I used to see them as almighty figures who have the answer to everything. But now, I’m coming to the realization that my parents are just as flawed and human as me.
They may not have the answer to everything.
They need love, assurance, and care just as we do.
They want to be known and seen.
Maybe, regardless of how long my mum has left in this life, I don’t think I’m going to regret the time I spent with her in these twilight years.
I don’t know how long my mother has left, but I’m damn well sure that I’ll make the most of it.
And perhaps that’s one of those unexpected ‘gifts’ of this cancer experience.