family – Page 11 – OakMonster®

Dream a little dream

…of mom.

Apparently, mom has been paying a visit to a few of us here and there.

Last week, I woke up sobbing hysterically and freaked the hell out of Brandon. After a long crazy dream about me being a failure (..something about burning something on the stove top when all I had to do was reheating a frozen block of soup, someone came into the house with a pet meerkat, and everyone was looking at me as if I just came off the short bus for burning that fucking soup…), I somehow ended up in a mall with my dad and brothers. They were ahead of me and had already went down the escalator.

As I stepped on, someone also stepped on from the other side. I looked over, and it was my mom. I looked at her. I touched her arm. She looked at me and smile. I started to cry.

“Oh, mom. I really miss you.”

“I miss you too, baby.”

And I woke up bawling for another good 5 minutes before going back to sleep.

My dad just called to tell me about mom’s visiting him too.

The first part had me in it. Dad and I were in his room, watching TV, when mom came in through the door. Dad told me, “Look! It’s Mommy. Go to her, quick!” And I ran to her as if she had just returned from a trip.

I asked him how old I was in this dream of his, and he said just like now.

And then his dream changed into yet another familiar scene. He and mom were at a buffet at some posh hotel. He asked her if to go see if anything look good. She shook her head.

“I just kind of want roasted duck curry (gaeng pedd bpedd yang).”

So when he woke up, he informed just about anybody about the dream. Pueng, of course, went out to the first food stall she could find the next morning to buy duck curry as alms for the monks. The aunties followed suit with their temple visits, bringing to the temple duck curry.

There you go, folks. I think Mommy had checked in to see if we are all doing well. It’s too bad she doesn’t believe in gambling or I’ll ask her for the next winning Mega Million numbers. Hehee.

Time travel

I was up at 6:30 a.m. this morning. Jet lag is getting better!

I did end up getting to work at 6 a.m. on Thursday morning. LOL. I drove in and left promptly at 3 p.m. and miraculously got home without killing myself. I did steal a solid hour of nap later in the afternoon though. How solid? I started the nap laying on the couch. When Brandon came in to wake me up, I was sitting and I had no idea how I got there. Yeah…interesting, isn’t it?

But a sleepy Thursday worked out to my advantage as I slept through the night and woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed right before my alarm went off on Friday. Yey! The day at work was quite normal except for massive sleepiness in the afternoon. Thank god for the bus as I slept like a rock all the way home.

I have been talking to some people about this recent trip. While I was in Bangkok and still the same way since I returned, I felt as if I have always been there. You know, since my last trip in July. I tried very hard to remember what all happened between my last trip and this one, and that two months don’t even register in my brain.

I mean, I have to look at the blog to remind me that I really was here between July and August. The last thing I remember was the day of fun at San Diego Zoo. It seemed, much like me sitting up on the couch in my sleep, I sleepwalked through a few months of my life and I didn’t even realize it.

It has been odd being back. I came home to many, many cards. My coworkers left one for me at work as well and got me crying my first day back. Heh. The outpouring of sympathy and support is more than I expected.

At the same time, I suddenly understand what I have read in many books about how everyone around you who knows seems to be tiptoeing. I know people mean very well when they ask how you are doing. But when some of them returned my “I’m fine” with “Really? Are you sure?”, that starts to get a little irritating.

I understand that if my mom’s death was sudden, I could be a lot more devastated that this. But with my mom’s long history of the illness, it seems I had the time to come to terms with her death.

Every time the phone rang and I got news that she was worse, I cried my head off. It almost felt like I was putting a deposit into an account. By the time we got to the actual death, that Bank of Sorrow was full. And I could hurt no more.

Like I told a few folks, with me and my mom, it seems that we had said our goodbyes when I left her after her very first chemo. I still have that image of mom, standing on the top of the stairs, looking at me leaving in my mind. That was the last time I saw her whole.

We had said all sorts of things to each other then, solving some of our issues and perhaps starting a few new spats. But it was us, being us as if there was to be no next trip. Ever the practical one, I want to believe she wanted to make it so that just in case something happened while I was gone, neither one of us would have any regrets.

Regrets? Oh, I have plenty. More like a heap of guilt topped with anger, really. Angry at the way she was treated. Angry at the shenanigans that was her final hours. Guilty that I wasn’t there for any of her ordeal since the discovery of the cancer all the way down to her last breath. (Actually, outside of Kob the Caregiver, none of us were there.)

Guilty that I never aspired to be the dutiful and glamorous daughter she could really be proud of.

When I received the call from my dad around noon PST on August 20, it was 2 a.m. August 21 Bangkok time. My family and Aunty Sida along with her daughter and son-in-law were getting to the hospital after receiving a call about mom’s rapidly worsening condition.

The week leading up to her death, mom’s jaundice had slowly settled down but it was the infections she was fighting off that made things more complicated. A few days before, her digestive system started to shut down, her stomach started to swell, and her breathing became more labored. They finally started her on morphine, but it had been a blessing that up to that point, mom wasn’t in any pain.

The day of her death, the nurses were doing the routine suction to clear my mom’s air way. And as always, mom put up a little fight. But this time, her tooth was knocked loose. Having been on many medications including a blood thinner, her tooth bled quite profusely and in turn her blood pressure dropped to a dangerous level.

That was when the family was called in. They said that if they couldn’t stop the bleeding, this could be the end. If they could stop the bleeding and add some platelets to her in the morning, we could extend her life for a few days.

The platelets were unavailable at that hour because Monday was a holiday for Thais. Stupid “Go home and vote on the new constitution referendums over the weekend and we’ll give you Monday off” policy. So they couldn’t get to the blood facility for the platelets, nor the equipment to make new ones even if the family was to offer their blood right then and there. Oh, and there were only med students on the duty as the “real doctors” were off on holiday so they didn’t have the authorization for the platelets anyway.

Another thing for me to be angry about. But my dad told me that, like they said, even if mom held on through that morning, the platelets would only give her hours or a day or two. It was better that she went the way she did.

By 4 a.m., her bleeding stopped and blood pressure stabilized. The “doctors” on duty told everyone to go home. Now they had to just waited for 8 a.m. office hour to get the platelets. Everyone said their goodbyes for the night and went home.

Around 6 a.m., mom took her last breath. Kob said she was just laying there, breathing. But then she took in her last breath, and that was it.

At my mom’s wake, Kob told me she wondered why everyone went home that morning instead of staying around. Well, for one, I told her, if the doctors said there was nothing to worry about, then there wasn’t anything to worry about. And for the other, if mom had anything to do with it at all, I think that was her way of once again, being the gracious host. Everyone got out of bed in the wee hours to see her once, she wasn’t about to have them out again. Not wanting to cause trouble or inconvenience, as Thais call it Kreng Jai, she’d rather go quietly than having everyone rushed back out.

In my head, I have played that recount of my mom’s death several times. Feeling again angry and disappointed at Thailand’s health care. It’s been that way since the very beginning when the senior surgeon declined the younger oncologist’s request for chemo follow up for my mom after the surgery to remove the malignant tumor from her lung. “I got it all. No chemo is needed,” that mother fucker said. And guess what, asshole, you did NOT get it all. The cancer spread and eventually killed her.

Anyways. At the same time grateful that mom has gotten the best care she could. I have a picture in my mind of what happened that morning and I was happy that mom went peacefully.

Her long journey has wrapped up. My journey without her has just begun. But funny how her lack of physical presence in my life is opening up all of these memories of her. Everywhere I look and everything I do, there is her story. There is a thought of her.

I miss her more now that she’s dead and maybe perhaps a plane of existence away than I have ever missed her when she was alive and merely half a world away.

And ironically, my own prediction came true that “Your head stinks” is REALLY the last thing my mom would ever said to me. (See 3rd from last paragraph.)

On my way

Getting ready to leave the house for the airport now. We’re waiting on my brother.

Let me just say that I have never gotten choked up leaving the house before. And here I am, teary-eyed just thinking about it.

It seems the past few years, the house has never been the same. Mom was sick back then. The change was the fact that we didn’t have her out and about with us much. Then mom got sicker, but she was still able to converse a bit. The last time, the house once again went empty with a little bit of hope.

And now it is just empty.

We cleared out most of her stuff. A few drawers here and there I will come back to clear out. Emotionally, I can’t do any more tossing things out.

Everyone is adjusting well. Dad is finally willing to let go of mom’s things in his room. We are introducing Pueng to a little bit of new policy at a time as one big sudden change would totally throw her off. I taught her to make oatmeal for dad this morning. She started to change her routine a bit too. Dad and I bought a bunch of new dishes and silverware yesterday as well.

It’ll be next year before I return here. By that point, the construction of the new family business, Portico Langsuan, should be close to finish. Things are going be different around here…

Alrighty. Off I go. See you in the US.

Cabin Fever

It’s 11 p.m. on a rainy Bangkok Saturday night. And I ain’t got nobody.

Just me in dad’s office, waiting for pictures from the day we scattered my mom’s ashes to upload.

I am in such a partying mood but my partner in crime, Tong, is out of town this weekend.

But then again, it’s raining cats and dogs out there. Better not be outside puddle hopping intoxicated or out on the slippery road with drunks behind the wheels. I should definitely count my blessing.

Oh well, hell. I’m just going to party with myself then. I’ll go fetch my Guinness. You sit tight.

…

Of course, today would be the day I helped Pueng cleared out the fridge (10-year old Grey Poupon and a rusty jar of ancient marachino cherries, anyone?), so she thoroughly cleaned the inside of the fridge.

And therefore, my Guinness is room temperature.

*sigh*

It was an odd day for me today. Definitely got a bad case of cabin fever. I mean, I was ready at 10 a.m. to go see Joy and Jett, but Lily called and told me we had to go in the afternoon. Since I had the plan to go with my dad, I canceled altogether.

But then, my dad didn’t get up until noon-ish. By the time we were done with lunch, it was close to 2 p.m. Dad decided to steal a nap after that while I was waiting for him to get ready in my room. Oh, and I was working while I waited to, proofreading the Tsunami Memorial Design Competition book one last time.

So, you’d understand my dismay when I poked my head in around 4 p.m. and he has just gotten up and was brushing his teeth. I could have gone with Lily to see Joy in the afternoon instead of being at home, waiting in vain for my dad. And while waiting for him some more, I cleared out yet another drawer full of mom’s stuff.

Productive afternoon, yes. But seriously not what I had in mind.

We left the house at 6 p.m. for the mall. I did some damage there today at Zen Midnight Sale weekend with a pair of shoes (which dad, a shoe freak himself, doesn’t really mind spending money on a good pair) and some Thai spa brand bath and body stuff. Even more damaging was our dinner bill. I didn’t see the options for local fish mixed sashimi and ordered the least expensive of the imports instead. Add to that a bottle of hot sake and a green tea creme brulee (ooooh soo soooo good. Nhien, you readin’ this?), and dad’s wallet lost a little bit of weight there.

But it was a good evening out with dad though. It’s a weekend tradition for our family. Usually, it’d be Sunday evening stroll. Dad taking his sweet time waking up and leaving the house. Then again, he prefers going close to closing time so the place isn’t crowded. We shop. We have dinner. We go home.

Exactly what we did today. Dad kept convincing me to buy something nice, something expensive. He doesn’t mind spending the money when you get the bang for your buck. I on the other hand, much like my mother, keep thinking how much stuff I could get for the same amount of money if I go to Lalaisapp Alley instead.

Like Zara, the Spanish H&M, is very reasonably priced for “high end” store, but I still couldn’t bring myself to buy a $40 shirt.

Shopping right now has become quite a drag because the weakened dollars. It used to be 40-some Baht a dollar and now it’s hovering around 32. Everything I picked up in the mall that used to be cheaper here is now about the same price.

Oh, and my Guinness? About $6 for this warm can of heaven. Worth every satang (cent)!

ETA: It’s getting a little odd waking up this morning. Because I was just here a month ago and now I’ve been here for almost 2 full weeks, I’m starting to feel like this–life in Bangkok–is what my life is and that my U.S. life is a dream.

But what life would it make without Guinness! 😉 Then again, just as I start to get comfortable here, I would be reminded of why I left in the first place. In my social circle, everyone knows everyone here it seems. Being in this city is like living in a fish bowl. Someone knows someone and something you do will come back or go around somewhere. There’s a reputation you have to maintain at all time. Especially if you’re a girl. So much is expected of you.

And that, my friend, is why I live in the US and not in Bangkok. 🙂

Ibuprofen, wherefore art thou?

If physical pain makes you feel like you’re alive, I am VERY alive today.

I’m all sore from working out and dancing about. My voice a little raspy from singing. My allergies, thank you Tylenol Allergy Sinus, was killing me earlier.

Sitting down and getting up has been some very ALIVE moments. I haven’t even tried going all up the stairs yet. Coming up from ground floor was already interesting enough.

There is no such thing as Ibuprofen in this household. I didn’t even think about that.

I seriously am punishing myself without even thinking about it. Ah…nothing brought out the little masochist in you like your mom’s death.

But there is some hope that tomorrow afternoon, my dad and I may trade in shopping excursions and instead treat ourselves to some massages at Healthland, an everyday people’s spa. Hmm….foot massage…

So, back to yesterday. I went running/walking for a good hour and did some free weights at Polo Club while Lily played tennis with a few older tennis ladies. After the workout, Lily and I went to dinner with my Mater Dei girls. There was our complete gang of four with me, Lily, Tong and Joy who forsake her husband and their 3-month old baby for the evening.

“For you, darling, I will be there,” she said. I am so very honored!

At first it was just us, then Bim came, followed by Ple (who’s on break from school at University of Hawaii…you bitch…heheee). Then came our restaurateur extraordinaire Note. Around dessert time, Bow, Pom and the bride to be Pong showed up. Tong, Note, Lily and I split the bottle of wine and everyone split dinner and many orders of desserts.

While the rest of the working world went home, Note invited us party people back to Kinnaree Gourmet Thai for drinks and karaoke. Our hostess, Lily, Ple, Bim (who is enjoying living alone at her condo…unlike others who still live with their parents), and myself had a cocktail each and we sang our pretty little heads off and danced about like mad old ladies that we are. I think our rendition of Greatest Love of All might have driven all of Note’s customers out of the joint. But the wait staff swore to us that they didn’t hear a thing downstairs.

This morning, with a bit of a hang over, I continued attacking the drawers. I actually finished all but one at the end of the day. So, yey me!

Aunty Sida, Aunty Jitr and Aunty Jim showed up once again along with my mom’s sisters Aunty Uan and Aunty Ponn. They took more clothes and I think we may finally made a dent in mom’s collection. I found more photos, postcards from dad to mom and Ake when he was still the only child in 1973, and our hand made cards for mom and dad on Valentine’s Day and so on.

Oh, and I finally found THE Holy Book, all of my mom’s fortune telling notes. A notebook full plus extra folder filled with scribbled scraps of paper. I want to go through all of that and see what’s what. And see what else have come true with all of the predictions mom had collected all these years.

And then what did I do tonight? I attended a line dancing class with Aunty Jim at the Polo Club for 2 hours. I was supposed to be line dancing, which it was…a little bit. The first one actually was the country-fied Hustle/Electric Slide. The rest, well, you do repeat the routine, facing each of the walls of the room. But there was some cha-cha and waltzing and other things involved. In a room full of aunties, I was the first youngun ever stepped into that room, apparently. The ladies thoroughly enjoyed teasing me at first and then they got so serious about the dancing and then there was no age divide. Everyone was just dancing! And I did it well enough that the instructor gave me CDs of the songs they’re dancing too. She and Aunty Jim encouraged me to come back to the advanced class on Monday night.

Dancing was much fun and got me heated up enough to follow with some more free weights. I am still pissed off that I’m so out of it I can barely do 2 reps of 10 push-ups. A big wussy I have become. And here I am thinking I’m going to pick up capoiera when I get back stateside.

So yes, I seem to like pain right now. But endorphin is GREAT. That and alcohol together make things a lot more peachy.

Tomorrow? A full schedule, once again. Morning out to see Joy and Jett at their house. Maybe late lunch with Bua and Kitty. And then a visit to Healthland with dad. Sunday is a thank you lunch for Team Khun Noi, afternoon of shopping and dinner with the family.

Monday? Morning of clearing out more stuff. Afternoon at the bank. And evening, perhaps maybe more line dancing! Tuesday, clearing more stuff and packing and heading back to reality.

A funny from the Excavation Site. 🙂

One of the aunties decided to just put on one of my mom’s mu-mus while she sort through mom’s stuff. It was easier to try on things instead of having to constantly taking off her clothes in the living room/mom’s room. (It’s a well covered space.)

By the end of the day, she couldn’t find her top she came in with! It seemed that she had put it down with the rest of mom’s stuff and someone might have picked it up thinking it was my mom’s and taken it home. The aunty had to go home with a new top, picked from my mom’s pile.

Earthly Possession

“Okay, when I get home, I’m going through all of my own stuff,” exclaimed Aunty Sida. “My poor kids! If I don’t start now, they’ll be doing the same thing we are doing right now after I’m dead!”

Folks, the aunties and me had been going through mom’s stuff for about 6 hours today, including lunch break. Pueng had brought down most of mom’s clothes to the living room. We all spot her favorite outfits and marveled at all the other pieces she had collected–some of them haven’t even been worn yet! The piles threaten to drown us a few times.

This is when it really hits you that you’re not taking anything with you when you die. And that if you have a lot of stuff, think about those who left behind a little bit. Just a wee little bit! 🙂

Aunty Sida was in charge of sorting through the jewelry, separating between costume cheapies and the real deal. Aunty Jim tried to seek out a few things in the pile but ended up with a few items and the duty of hand bag sorting. Aunty Ray, who wears the same size as my mom, went through what she could put her hands on and picked out a garbage bag full of stuff.

If I can find a picture from the blessing ceremony at my brother’s wedding, you’d see my mom in this beautiful Thai silk yellow dress. As it turned out, that wasn’t hers. It was Aunty Ray’s! What happened was that in the mad dash to get to the wedding, mom had left her Thai silk dress to wear for the ceremony at home. She only brought the evening dress for the reception and the casual dress she had on. Aunty Ray, ever the good sport, ran mom back up to the hotel room and switched to wear her western dress so mom could have her Thai dress.

“Mother of the groom wearing the same outfit for the ceremony and the reception? Over my gimpy fat body!” she said.

As for me, once I was done shuttling some stuff down from my parents’ bedroom, I went through 1 regular drawer and 1 filing draw packed to the brim with her papers.

And oh my god how my mom could keep her papers! Holy hell. I mean, she kept EVERYTHING. And yet, in no particular order. Well, I think there was an order until that drawer was full then she started plopping things in another drawer. I found all three of our studying abroad files, completed with some grades, expense records in different sheets of scrap papers, and correspondence. (Onk’s letters were totally entertaining, by the way. Mine were always packed margin to margin.)

I found a letter from dad to mom in 1968, begging her to come to Oregon early. The man started off pouty.

“The reasons you gave me as to why you couldn’t leave earlier are not really the reasons. Are those things more important to you than being with me? Do I not matter to you that much?”

And, boy can my dad sprinkled on some sugar at the end.

“I can’t live like this alone, without you by my side!”

Smooth operator, my dad.

As all of us went through mom’s things, there would be an occasional sniffle from one corner of the room. Aunty Ray picked up my mom’s favorite outfit. She cried. Aunty Sida found the jewelry they bought together. She cried. I found some documents. I cried.

Oh, I forgot to mention that there will be part two of this with Aunty Jitt coming over tomorrow. I will help in the morning and be gone by lunch time to join my brothers and dad in visiting a friend of the family who catered the entire funeral for us for free. Also, dinner with my girls tomorrow night. It should be fun. I hope I can get a few drinks in.

Brandon, baby–I will not be putting away my files when I get home for another month. I’m sure you’d understand. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to see ANY paperwork if I can help it for a month. Heh. 😉

“Mom was in my dream last night,” Onk said over lunch with the aunties. “She was sitting at a bus stop. I drove by and I had to do a double take: ‘Wait a sec. That was mom!'”

Aunty Sida said, “Oh yeah, that is totally a dream. Noi NEVER took the bus.”

For superstitious Thais, there is a difference between seeing someone in your dream and having them visiting you in your dream. Different groups believe in different ways the dead pay a visit.

According to true Buddhist belief, mom should go straight to wherever she would be, in the heavens, waiting to be reborn. But some Thais believe the spirit comes back to visit the family on the third night. Some said at the day of the cremation. And some said after the remains are scattered.

The aunties asked us if mom came to us that morning when she passed away. One said she woke up around that time just thinking about my mom long before the other aunty called her. One said that she kept teasing mom about not giving her a smile in the last few days and mom came to her that morning in a dream and said, “Here I am! I’m smiling now!”

The rest of the time, we think mom is already up on the heavens, watching over us, dropping little hints here and there that she’s there.

On the day of the cremation ceremony, it was stifling hot. I mean, I looked and felt like I had just came out of the pool and put my clothes on. Although during our procession around the crematorium, the sun was covered by clouds. Sure, the cloud and the stifling heat were signs of the rain to come. But rain was so far away.

Oddly enough, once the guests start to arrive, a cool breeze picked up and it began to sprinkle, light enough that you wouldn’t get wet, but heavy enough to cool off the entire area, making the evening pleasant. By the time we were ready to have honored guests up on the crematorium to begin the ceremony, the rain stopped completely so nobody got wet going from the seating area.

Oh, and did I mention that the parting gifts were umbrellas?

It was speculated of course that my mom, ever the Hostess with the Most-est, was making sure everyone was comfortable through the ordeal by working with the weather gods.

Also, mom was never the sun-and-sea kind of person. She was sensitive to the sun and couldn’t swim. And, like mother like daughter, she got motion sick easily too. Since we’re smack dab in the middle of monsoon season, we braced for choppy waters where we were going to scatter her ashes. But nope. The sea was calm. Sky blue. Beautiful day at the beach.

Mom was a scaredy cat. She was afraid of the water (because she couldn’t swim), the geckos (see?), blood, scary movies, action movies, people getting hurt, cockroaches, driving, computers, cats, big dogs, you name it! I believe that she hasn’t come to “visit” us because she didn’t want to scare us. Onk believes that with mom being afraid of ghosts, she is probably scared of herself.

But I think she may have visited me early this morning. The aunties seemed to think so.

I woke up at 5 till 4 a.m. with a start. I felt the bed shook…well…more like a low rumble, the way a low level earthquake feels. I started to think that I was dreaming and besides, if it was an earthquake, I should probably get to the door jamb. I went to open the door, stood underneath it and held the frame. It rumbled there too. But it could be my A/C doing the vibrating, so I touched the floor outside the bedroom, and that was rumbling. I didn’t hear any truck or anything outside. I stood there for a few more moments and everything stopped.

I went back to bed and turned on the TV perhaps to catch the news about a big quake somewhere else that could’ve shaken Bangkok like what happened a few months ago. Nothing on CNN or BBC. Local news wasn’t really breaking news but a guy going over today’s newspapers. (Yeah, I know. There are a lot of those “news” shows in the morning here.) After another half hour or so, I went back to sleep.

I asked if anyone else felt the earthquake last night. Onk, of all people, should have felt it because his room is on the 4th floor mezzanine. Nope. Nothing. Both he and dad said if there was an earthquake, it would’ve been on the news.

I checked the US geological survey against the one in the UK and the closest quake was in the far end of Indonesia. No way would I have felt that here.

The aunties conclude that it was mom visiting me. Onk and dad think I sleepwalked. I still think it was a mild earthquake that may not have registered on the scale. I just happened to be awake at the right moment.

Or something like that.