I haven’t been so angry for some time. I just feel as if the weight of the world, at least the world that is my family, lies on my bare bony, shoulders. It’s not like I wanted to yell at my 80something grandmother, but when the kettle loudly whistled in the kitchen - thank goodness I heard it - and I ran out to take it off the stove, I couldn’t believe that my grandmother was nowhere to be found. She had forgotten about the kettle and was upstairs, and of course couldn’t hear the kettle. Had I not been home, and normally I would have been out running, the house would have probably burned down as the stove element was on the highest setting. Even when I took the kettle off, there were sparks.

My grandmother means well, she wants to help out. With old age though, there are just certain things that one forgets and one isn’t able to do as well – things like fire and water are dangerous elements. I didn’t mean to yell at my grandmother, my only living grandparent, my intention was just to tell her that she doesn’t have to do these things. My family has been telling her this for a long time, but she feels guilty that if she doesn’t perform these tasks, we’ll be unhappy that they are undone. I tried to explain that’s not the case in my broken cantonese, and that there are other things she can do just as well if she wanted to help out, like washing vegetables. I feel sorry that my grandmother is bored. How could she not be? A widower and one with little formal education, there’s not much to do to pass the time away. At times like these sometimes I wonder if it’s better just to die or hire a private nursing maid. Sounds cruel doesn’t it but I’m being honest.

At the age of 22, I feel the weight of supporting my family. My sister’s consistent ill health, including bouts of IBS and scary carcinoids, my brother’s schizophrenia and lack of independence, and my parents trying to save for retirement in self employment…and take care of their elder kids. I scream and I yell in my mind - damnit why me? At the age of 22, I am trying to educate myself so I can provide for myself in the future, because I sure don’t have a trust fund or an inheritance waiting for me. More like than not, I will be supporting my family financially in the future. All I have is me. Sometimes, it’s difficult for me to associate with or not scream at people who complain about not having a significant other, a job or particular material possessions. But I try to smile and sympathize and not be a bitch and judge, but…there is so much more to life than these.

My heart breaks for elder abuse, which statistically happens more often than you think. My grandmother has pasts ghosts that haunt her, and undoubtedly drive some of her actions. Living through the communist revolution in China, it’s not had to see how hard it must have been falling from grace when her husband was a KMT official to being a refuge, dirt poor in Hong Kong. Seniors should be cared for within a loving community, not neglected and yelled at by people wishing they would just die.

Maybe I’m just selfish and I don’t want to lay my life down to sacrifice for my family – to give up my dreams and stay at home to serve them. It would require some superwoman effort, for example I could do my masters at UBC and still live at home commuting about 3 hours a day, or I could forget my masters altogether and take some kind of job that I don’t like but would pay the bills. I would be miserable but I could. I just don’t want to. Is it unloving? To use the best years of life this way. Maybe it’s just a matter of perspective. Maybe it’s circumstances that can easily change. Maybe…I have to give up my dreams and ambitions. So I ask myself, a very basic question. What does the Lord require of me? Why, my life verse, to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with him (Micah 6:8). What does that mean? How do I apply that? Perhaps it isn’t to make policy, to write fabulous articles, or to plan better programs like I dream but to be at home. And somehow find joy in it. I’ll let you know when I get there.

Kelly and I spent a day doing girlie things during the Easter weekend and one of the things we were talking amidst eating Bearded Paps and noodles was about suffering. She was saying how the reason the two of us are still friends, unlike many of our other high school relationships, is because we share many things in common, one of the most being the fact that we both went through a greal deal of shit in our teenage years. Different stories, for her it was a life-or-death surgery and all that goes along with it, and for me, it was a plague of diseases that befall upon my siblings. Many people that we know, but don’t really know, I am sure can relate to these kinds of experiences, and have likewise concluded that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”…and the hope, always the hope, that this means better days ahead.

God, I am on the ground faced down at this point. Please take this headache from me. It is gorgeous outside in Vancouver, and I have to believe, like Alex said to me last night, that “it’s OK and it’s going to be good.”