June 28 is the memorial day of my mother. On this date in 2002, she left this world. Every year when June arrives, bits and pieces of memory about mother and me arise. This year I like to commemorate her by writing some of her stories prior to her memorial day.
Mother was the second daughter of my maternal grandparents who rented my paternal grandfather’s land to plant crops to feed their family. At the age of 10, she obeyed her parents’ command, walked into Chen family as a fostered child daughter-in-law. That was a smart idea my paternal grandfather proposed. He knew my mother’s natural father was a modest and honest farmer, he believed descendants of good people would be nice for his son, my father. So he said to my grandma that he wanted to get that girl, my mother, into Chen family to be trained well before she was officially married to his son.
Buying fostered child daughter-in-law was a common practice found among rich families of my grandparent’s era. So my mother, at the age of 10, carried a simple pack of belongings, holding the sad emotion of leaving her own family, though poor, with her mother’s company, walked from her village for 3 miles to Chen family in the town. She told me late in her life that from time to time she resented her mother being so cruel selling her for the survival of the family.
Before she was officially put together with my father at age 18, she was trained to be a good wife. As a 10 year old child, her first mission was to look after my great grandmother. She shared a bed with my great grandmother. She walked alongside of her grandmother wherever she went. Before long, her responsibility extended to include cooking for this big family of about 20 people including grandfather’s team of carpenters. She was meant to get up before four o’clock in the morning to start cooking breakfast and boiling hot water while everyone was still sleeping. She recalled the hardship of that cooking task, in the winter time to a child using the very conventional olden day kitchen facilities. She had to be standing on a short stool so as to be high enough to work on the stove. It was even harder for her to get up in the morning when there was a cold blitz. She cherished her grandmother’s kindness. She said that often her grandmother woke up seeing her struggling to get up, pulled her back to the warm bed, asked her to sleep for a little longer and she would remain awake in order to wake her up for her cooking tasks.
Part of my grandfather’s training plan for his fostered daughter-in-law was sending her to school which was my mother’s dream. So she was taken into grade four skipping the first three years for a normal child because of her height and maturity. Though she was excited about being given the opportunity to go to school, this unusual class placement was a great challenge to her. She got to work harder to catch up. My grandfather spared some of his working time everyday to teach her learn new words. Soon my mother caught up with the other students despite her big load of household tasks, and became the top few students of the class. Composition was her strength. One of her writings was put on the bulletin board to be shown to the whole school.
Mother graduated from school with excellent marks. She begged for further schooling. Her teacher came to visit my grandparents hoping to make them agree with her request to go to high school. My grandfather agreed, however, grandmother thought a daughter-in-law with high school certificate would be arrogant and uneasy to be disciplined, so she rejected her request. My mother was very obedient, she just accepted the reality.
As originally planned, she was married to my father at the age of 18. Their first child was a boy. Unfortunately this boy, my eldest brother, died at very young age in a catastrophic earthquake occurred in middle part of Taiwan. This tragedy hurt her deeply. But fate didn’t just stop fighting against her. Before me, there were two of her children, a boy and a girl, died during their babyhood. They were said to be very cute and healthy. The whole family pampered them very much. But a sudden attack of fever lasting a few days and they were gone. My mother later recalled this heart breaking experiences, still felt the hurt vividly in her mind.
Before I was born, there was no son to carry on Chen’s name. My mother was very worried about the gender of the baby in her pregnancy in 1950. Her anxiety about whether the coming baby would be a son or a daughter was especially high because my grandma was very frail then and kept telling my mother that her soul would never be consoled if this time was not a boy. Mother relieved upon giving birth to me, a boy, and the midwife held me to show to my grandmother in her bed. Three days after my birth grandma died with her wish for a grandson fulfilled.
With 6 children to feed, mum and dad got to work very hard. Dad worked as a technician for a timber mill in a neighbouring town, and mum got to pick up the load of running a grocery shop and getting the household chores done at the same time. I often saw mother panting and sweating all day rushing around with the things to do. Once I remembered in a summer evening when I was about 6 of age, there were the three daughters of our neighbour gathered at our kitchen, and I heard they were saying, “we come to watch Obasang (auntie, in Japanese) having her dinner.” In my mind, I wondered what was my mum’s eating her meal of any special? Then I saw my mother rushed back home from our shop, sweating. She greeted these three girls knowing they came to watch her performing of eating a meal. Silently she picked up a bowl, filled it with rice porridge, picked up chopsticks, shovelled a big mouthful of the thickened porridge then picked up bit of side dish and put it into her mouth to chew, and then gulped them down. With 3 repeats of the same movements, the bowl was emptied. Within about 3 minutes, mum had done her meal with her back soaked by sweat. The process was watched amazingly by these audiences. One of the girls commented, “It is an enjoyment watching Obasang eating her meal. The meal seems to be delicious from the way Obasang eats.” And of course, mum smiled at them silently after the meal and rushed out to look after our shop.
Since mother started learning how to cook from 10 years old, she was good at cooking. She could make a good meal in less than one hour including preparation, cooking and tidy-up. The dishes she made were of the class of a restaurant. But of course, we could only get the chance to enjoy mum’s delicious dishes on special occasions such as New Year’s Eve and traditional festivals. Although mum was capable of making delicious food, she actually dreaded any big day on which she was supposed to do fancy cooking apart from looking after her shop. On any of that kind of big days, she got to get up even earlier to organise everything for the shop first. Then, she left the shop to my 3rd sister to look after while she rushed to the market to shop all the cooking material. Then, she needed to wash, peel, cut, chop, marinate, pre-process all by her alone to get all the material ready for making various kind of yummy dishes. At the end of the cooking and worshiping ritual, she always exhausted and could only lay on the bed for a short while before going to our shop to close it for the day.
Her life was a bit relieved after my father decided to get our shop sold, and shifted to live in Taipei from Ching Shui. My father was employed as office assistant in my big brother-in-law’s company. This job did not earn him enough income to support us, so my mother offered to serve as the company’s cook taking care of the 3 meals a day for the office employees. This supplemented the family’s income.
Mother’s life was noticeably improved after I had graduated and fulfilled my 2 year term of military service and got a job. This period began in 1975 when Taiwan economy grew rapidly. Mum had opportunities joining in tours to quite a few touring destinations in Taiwan. But she did not want to just let me carry the burden alone; she sought for casual job available in our community. There was an umbrella manufacturing factory in our community. They needed more hands to sew the fabric onto the umbrella skeleton. That was not a laborious job, but was rather tedious and required great patience to do it. She persuaded my father to take part in this simple but tedious job. So they started sewing umbrellas.
They started early in the morning no matter it was summer or winter. Sometimes it was so cold in winter morning, and yet she already started sewing the umbrella before dawn. A few times I asked her why not sleep-in a bit. She said to me, “You will know an elderly cannot sleep long when you are at my age.” Sometimes, I stood at her back and gave her a massage over the neck and shoulders, and I could feel this small offering brought her great happiness.
In January 1989, father died at age 74. To my mother, father’s death must have triggered her box of memories as he was the one she had known of since age 10. They had woven their memories over 63 years of time together despite the fact that there was more bitterness than joy.
In April 1990, I accompanied mum to visit 4th sister in Canberra who immigrated to Australia in 1989. That was mum’s first time ever travelled overseas. Upon seeing each other at sister’s front yard, this pair of mother and daughter hugged each other tightly bawling loudly. The emotion erupted like a collapsing dam. To mum, she was just recovering from the loss of her closest man, and to my sister, she was adjusting to a totally new life in a new country. Both of them had tried so hard to compress their emotion to prevent it from eruption, and now it had got its breaking point.
Mother had great impression on the living quality of western country on this trip to Australia. And this could be related to our decision of immigrating to New Zealand in 1992.
Socialable as mother was, she soon had very good interaction with many of the new Taiwanese immigrant families. She attended the local primary school activity, too. Once my son’s school invited all the grannies of their school students to take part in their teaching activity. Each of the invited grannies was to tell the students in their group about what kind of games they played at school when they were young. My mother had no English, however, she bravely entered the classroom together with many English speaking grannies. Sitting on the low stools in a circle with the students of their group, they began their activity. I saw mum from outside the classroom smiling all the time; sometimes looked at the children, sometimes looked out the window seeking me. She told me later that she felt a bit nervous but could feel the friendliness from other grannies and the children.
To an elderly like mum, living in a culturally new country is a torture, and I could only appreciate it myself a few years after our arrival. There were a lot of mental sufferings such as loneliness, frustration, isolation, nervousness and etc. But all are too late. There was no go-back; my children had been accustomed to local life style. I felt sorry for mum. And it could be due to these sufferings, mum devoted her time in practice Buddhist cultivation when we were out at work and her grand children were in school.
She had a counter brought from Taiwan. When she chanted Amitofo (Buddha name) for a whole round of her chanting beads she recorded 1 into the counter. Thus she went on chanting, chanting, chanting till the time we all came back from work and school. Then she called us into her room one by one. She then stood beside us, holding her chanting bead ring and lightly stoking over our back, murmuring her pray and transferring her merit gained from the chanting to us. I later realised that the so called Buddhist retreat in a monastery is similar to what mum had been doing during that period of time. They practice isolation, silence, mindfulness, all as what mum did.
In July 2001 when mother was 86, her weakening kidney made her frail and her doctor sent her to stay in North Shore Hospital for one week for a thorough test. Coincidentally my work was very busy with a lot of incoming stock, so I could not take a whole week leave for mum’s companionship during her hospital check-up. I had to be in and out of her ward and my work when nessary. She could manage to be in hospital by herself in the day time, but was scared of being there without having me beside her in the night time. So the night shift nurse was kind enough to get me a lying chair to sleep by her bed. Mum’s high social skill astonished me when one day I dropped in from work seeing her talking to the resident of her neighbouring bed, a local Kiwi, by means of body language.
The result of the check-up indicated that mum’s kidneys were beyond the effect of medication available, and doctor thought that her condition was not suitable to apply urine analysis treatment as well. Then she was discharged from the hospital with new prescription of antibiotic for keeping her chronic kidney inflammation under control.
Mother’s fragility was getting worse by month after her last hospital stay. Walking from her room to our dining room could take ages to complete, so I requested a wheel chair from the hospital to move her around in the house. This was about the last 3 months of her life time when she became bed bound. The last month saw her losing her appetite. I asked her if there was any pain or discomfort, and she said no pain except being weak. To a devoted Buddhist, having no pain and discomfort and being conscious at the last stage of life is a great blessing.
On the 28th June 2002, I was preparing to go to work. Though knowing mum was very weak and had had no appetite for food for 3 days, I thought this was another day of saying good bye to her and would be seeing her in bed when I got home from work. I waved her good bye before going to work and she pulled her left hand out of the duvet, smiled and said in her mouth “good bye.”
When I was at work that day, I had an impulse of writing a fax to Dr, Alex Chan, her doctor. In the message I told him that mother had been very frail in the past 2 weeks and it seemed that her life was to come to the end any time. And I begged if he could make a home visit of her on that day? But I did not receive his reply before I was off the day.
When I got home and entered mum’s room, we exchanged greetings and then I proceeded with the routine of catheterisation to empty her bladder. Half way in the process, I suddenly heard mum breathed heavily and then all became silent. I raised my head and realised that mum had just passed away. In panic I rang her doctor at the clinic. There was no answer. So I rang his home. A lady answered my call in English, seemingly the doctor’s house keeper. I requested to speak to Dr. Chan; she declined. So before she hung up, I hurriedly said to her that because my mother was dying I needed to talk to her doctor. Still, she wouldn’t pass the phone on, instead she said to me that if mother was dying then I should call 111 for ambulance but not doctor.
I went back to mum’s room making sure the Amitofo music was still on. Beside this, my brain seemed to be blank; didn’t know what to do next. About 10 minutes after the phone, I heard a car driving up the driveway and parked by the door. It was Dr. Chan. He must have figured out, from the phone and the fax message sent to his clinic, that my mother was dying. He had no obligation with my request for home visit whatsoever, but he came. I was very grateful to what he did to my mother. After some checks, he proved her death. Upon hearing this announcement, tears came out of my eyes, and I knelt down before mum. Doctor held me up and asked me to get mum’s death certificate from his clinic next day, then I saw him off.
We followed the tradition of Pure Land sect of Buddhism to keep mum’s body undisturbed for at least 8 hours. During this period we played the Amitofo music non-stop to remind her soul of focusing on the goal of shifting to the Blissful World of Amitofo.
The funeral agent was called in the next morning to sort out the detailed arrangement of the funeral.
Our friend David Huang helped to invite whoever knew my mother to attend the funeral. My boss, Thomas Chiu, was invited by me to deliver a speech about my mother. Two of my colleagues, Mark and Dennis came to pay their condolences, too. Many of mum’s friends turned up. Mrs. Jean Huang presented a pair of flower bunches to pay her respect and condolences. My 4th sister and her daughter Meiling flew from Sydney to attend the funeral. I asked the funeral hall host to play the Amitofo music as the background sound throughout the event. The funeral was simple but very solemn.
As mum had mentioned to 4th sister once in their meeting that she wished to be cremated and her remain be kept in Fo Guang Shan Temple in Sydney. She had this wish because my 4th sister's huband, died two years earlier from liver cancer, was buried in Sydney and his soul plaque was kept in that temple, too. So sister arranged a Buddhist ceremony in the temple on August 3, and I flew from Auckland on the same day with the box of mum’s remain. We went to the temple directly from airport.
The solemn Buddhist ceremony began as soon as mum’s remain was placed on the altar by Buddha’s statues. The chanting of sutra, smell of incense, and the atmosphere in the hall triggered my sadness that my tears streamed down even after the rituals were finished. And then mum’s remain is stored in the pagoda where solemn Buddhist music and worships are presented twice daily to remind the souls of continuing practice in order to achieve complete liberation.
Almost 6 years after mother left this world, I write about her life briefly hoping my descendants whoever reads her stories will be touched by my mother’s decent spirit and endeavour to learn her virtues.
