Just as we didn’t predict that Sunday, September 21st, would be Mom’s last day at home, we didn’t realize that her days were numbered. Even nearly seven years later, on Friday, September 10th, 2021, it’s still difficult for me to grasp how time was ticking ever louder with every passing moment of the 13 remaining days that were left to her.
As usual, I tried to find improvement when I visited her in the hospital that week. I wanted to believe that she would return home once more when I walked up to her bedside on Monday and kissed her, apologizing. “I’m so sorry I had to get the visiting nurse last night but you looked so unlike yourself. I wanted to be safe. I didn’t want anything to happen. I hope you understand, Mom. I love you.” “That’s OK, you did what you had to do. I love you too. I’m feeling a little better.” Mom replied somewhat drowsily. “How are the cats?” I loved how Mom always asked about them on every visit—she who used to be a dog person, she who once wanted a Yorkie.
“They’re fine, Mom. Although I think Charlie was looking for you last night in your room.” I had moved back to Mom’s room because it was closer to the phone in the study.
At least, she was in a better mood than the previous night when she arrived at the hospital, outraged that the visiting nurse had sent her. I wanted to cry despite the epithets she flung at me in Taiwanese when she shouted that I was trying to kill her. Since her oxygen was low, the nurse put an oxygen mask on her—which made Mom even more uncomfortable and led to her receiving a dose of morphine. Did I do the right thing? This question was only half resolved when x-rays taken later that night revealed that she had masses around her lungs: the doctors couldn’t determine if the masses were cancerous or they were a buildup from pneumonia. No wonder her oxygen was dangerously low. I guess I was not entirely misguided after all when I called the nurse. Yet, I couldn’t help but wonder that maybe, just maybe if I had become a doctor like my parents wanted me to do, I might have decided that she did not have to go—and she might have a while longer.
I felt some comfort that Dad was staying with her that night. In many ways, Dad was both a bane and a boon. Generally selfish and uncooperative, he was nonetheless willing to stay with Mom in the hospital. To this day, I remain grateful, thinking he must have loved and appreciated her at some level, despite his cheating and general neglect of her over the years—even after she nursed him back to health after his quintuple bypass in 2004. Yet, it was also fair, I thought, since Mom had sacrificed herself for him throughout her life to the days just prior to her first stroke, as I will discuss at greater length in later weeks. As for myself, I would have stayed with Mom but I was teaching the online course that I had fought for so hard last spring—when I threatened to sue because they were planning to reassign that class to a more senior faculty member. I couldn’t afford to quit now, after three weeks, and embarrass myself: given the notoriously spotty hospital WiFi, I had no choice but to return home at night. Yet, whatever regrets or second thoughts I had at that moment about teaching that term, the class would wind up a much-needed refuge from my grief after her passing. It served as a reminder to me of why I enjoyed teaching and why it gave me every reason to live. But more on that later—
Over the next few days, her exhaustion and fatigue prompted a visit from a hospital social worker. A nurse had already pointed out to me how much weaker she seemed than in July. The doctors must have relayed to the social worker how little Mom had improved as she lay in bed either listless or half asleep most of the time showing little appetite. “I think we have to acknowledge that she doesn’t have much longer,” the social worker told me in her office, handing me a few pamphlets on grief and steps to take upon her death.
I did my best not to collapse in tears in the taxi as I headed home that night. I glanced through the pamphlet on death and was further perturbed when I recognized in Mom some of the very signs described there. For the last few months, she had been restless in bed, spending many nights picking at her sheets. And now, I knew why.
But suddenly on a clear, cool Saturday morning, she seemed to perk up. Maybe it was because she had two visitors from the local Taiwanese Association. They brought a tray full of a Chinese-style roast chicken that she had always enjoyed. Meanwhile, not knowing they would bring the chicken, I had also brought her favorite beef stew which I had prepared last night along with a porridge mixed with yams. She began to eat more energetically with evident pleasure—even if her appetite was still not quite up to the level of her healthier days. On Sunday, she seemed still better and more alert, eating with more gusto. She couldn’t wait for her physical therapy even though the nurse and therapist did not show up. We were even more pleased when the doctor making his rounds confirmed that her lungs were clearing up and she was recovering from what they were calling pneumonia. Already, I was mentally preparing a discharge from the hospital the next day or day after: I would make or buy whatever breakfast she wanted--and then we would return home. “Mom, what would you like for breakfast tomorrow?” She couldn't quite decide what she wanted; so I told her, "look, I usually call you in the mornings anyway. You can tell me then."
I will never forget our goodbyes that weekend. She was fully awake both afternoons and managed to say "I love you” as I stroked her hair and kissed her. She wasn’t just my mother; she had become my cherished one and only child just as I was hers. On Sunday, when one of Dad’s friends came to pick me up, she half-jokingly cautioned me, "don't get into trouble." Ever the protective mother!
That evening, it felt as if a cloud had lifted. After packing some of her clothes and shoes for her return home tomorrow, I called Mom to check upon her and tell her about an annoying fly that had gotten into a nearly full water bottle which I had sealed immediately. Even after 3 days, to my astonishment, it was still alive and kicking in that water. “Mom, certainly, you can thrive too, right?” But she was drifting off. Dad told me she had only eaten some of the food.
Waking up excitedly next morning to call Mom and escort her home—the morning of the 29th, I got a rude awakening as the phone rang endlessly. Maybe the nurse had taken her for another test? Finally, an unfamiliar female voice answered the phone.
“Mom?” I inquired, full of doubt.
“Are you her daughter, Ms. Chiu?”.
“Yes.”
“Hi, I’m Dr. Santival*, I’m sorry to tell you, but your mother had a stroke sometime late last night. We’re taking her to the ICU.”
Half dizzy with fear and panic on that partly sunny day as I headed over to the hospital, I prayed that she would wake up, just as she had earlier that year on that fateful day in April.
But as the hours passed—10 am, 1am, noon, 1, 2, 3, and 4 pm, it became increasingly apparent that it wouldn’t happen. And what a pity too when her room had a beautiful view of the hills nearby even if the skies had become overcast with low, gray clouds.
Meanwhile, Dad and I bickered as Mom’s fate looked increasingly grim. He told me Mom had asked him for more aspirin after the nurses had given her her meds. As it was, after asking the doctors about her meds and calling my cousin Vanessa, a pharmacist, to ask her opinion, I wondered if Mom had not been overdosed and egregiously so. She had become so frail, shrinking to 4’9” and weighing less than 80 pounds or so. And Dad, careless as he was in all areas outside of his research, unthinkingly assented to her call for aspirin.
“You fucking idiot! You killed Mom!” I hissed.
“No, you did,” he answered. “If we hadn’t moved to Connecticut, this wouldn’t have happened!”
“You don’t know that. And by the way, you do recall that the doctor said her cancer probably started in November, when you and Mom were in Taiwan? If you had gotten your pension out of Taiwan the previous year like we kept telling you, you wouldn’t have to go last year! Mom most likely got her cancer from the unsanitary food she ate there. You know Taiwan gets Fukushima-tainted food from Japan, right? You only went to Taiwan to be with your fucking CUNT cousin, your mistress. Still cheating on Mom even though she nursed you back from your heart attack. You stressed her out over the years; stress can cause and exacerbate cancer, you know. You should die, not Mom!”
During our quarrel, I noticed that Mom was writhing on her bed. Was she about to wake up? Dad and I rushed to her side, shaking her gently, but she remained comatose. When we had another argument later—Dad wanted more food while I couldn’t understand how he could possibly be hungry when Mom was in the condition she was—she grew restless again. It was only in retrospect that I learned that many stroke victims can still hear even if they can’t speak. Mom must have been distressed to hear us exchanging our bitter recriminations.
Yet, I did wonder: did I help kill Mom by moving to Connecticut? Did I kill my beloved second cat as well by moving here since he died of liver cancer just three months later? But what could I have done, I thought to myself, I had come to hate Chicago with such a passion, feeling that if I were to stay any longer in that cramped condo in a city that was growing more and more crowded (so different from the way it was when I happily bought that condo in 1989), I would have gone stark raving mad. My university had just offered health benefits to those living in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut—and so I moved: even though they eventually let down their side of the bargain, I thought, by cutting my teaching load for no discernible reason and despite being nominated for a teaching award and publishing on a yearly basis.
But I wondered too if there was general callousness against the elderly and racism involved with my mother’s care in the hospital—or lack thereof: problems that were not confined to this state but prevailed across the nation. I still recall that night in ER in July when Mom’s blood pressure was rising sharply and I had difficulty summoning the doctor. When one finally arrived, she explained that younger people were prioritized because they had better chances of surviving. I thought back to the call I had gotten from a doctor recommending that I send her to a rehab/hospice owned by her primary physician. Again, conflict of interest, anyone? I thought about all I had read about the treatment of minorities in the healthcare profession: that they were less likely to get the treatments they needed, let alone the best ones. I thought about how her primary physician ignored me, refusing to contemplate switching from Lovenox which likely caused her incontinence: she had never had that problem before. I thought about how they did not assign her a gastrointestinal oncologist even though her cancer of the bile duct originated in that area. How they refused to consider gemzar and cisplatin, the most effective means against bile duct cancer: she only got gemzar. And of course, I wondered why they overdosed Mom this week. Were they trying to kill her? Did they induce that second stroke thinking she was better off dead? I wondered too, maybe if Dad weren’t such a schlemiel or if I had a strong, articulate white husband in tow who could back me up, could we have avoided this. I had long noticed, after all, that Asian women with white husbands were treated better than me: no wonder so many Asian women wanted to marry whites and change their surnames!
Or was all this simply overshadowed by the fact that we were not of the donor class, the people who truly matter in our profit-driven healthcare system? I could only remember the chilling words from a Filipino nurse who lived a few doors away in my condo. She had been instructed by the hospital bigwigs and senior nurses to treat the wealthiest patients with the utmost care—in addition to getting the best possible cures. “They matter, she quoted. “No one else does. They’re the ones donating large amounts to the hospital.” Although I had always supported the notion of a nationalized health system given my experiences with the British NHS when I studied at Oxford, Mom’s experiences became a true eye-opener. No one had a right to receive better treatment and care simply because they were born to the right family, ethnicity, or race. Or because they were fortunate enough to land a decent-paying job. Health is a right, not a privilege.
Right before I left, Dad told me of an odd thing that happened last night before her stroke. Mom suddenly called for me and her already deceased mother as well as all of her eight siblings from oldest to youngest in perfect order. It must have been not long after that time that she lost whatever consciousness she had.
Could she feel an impending stroke? Did she know she was near death?
*not her real name. In fact, I have changed all names, except for my immediate family.