You can tell I’m tired and uninspired by the title of this post. I haven’t really realized what a mess I am and what a mess I’m in till the last few days. I woke up and saw everything after my mother died. These past weeks were busy taking care of the business of her passing. I was surviving on adrenaline.

Now I have to get into the business of my own life. I haven’t thought about that for a long time, that I had a separate life. There was just the 2 of us for the first 6 years of my life. My parents married when they were one month shy of 18. They were still babies in an arranged marriage. My father was still going to school. That was how it was in China then. When I was 2, my father immigrated to Canada. I had no memories of him during those 2 years.

I did not meet him till I was 6 when my mother and I reunited with him in Hong Kong. He stayed for a year. My sister was conceived and born. I have no memories of my father during that time either except that I was reprimanded for not calling this stranger ‘father’. My sister was almost 2 when we joined him in Canada.

My mother did not know English. Being in a small town in Saskatchewan there were little resources in learning for immigrants back in those days. My father was busy in the cafe earning a living for us. My mother had no one to talk to except me. So that is how I became my mother’s confidante. She was a very good story teller. The times she lived through had many stories. Her family had a very interesting history. I heard them all and more besides. I am sure I became part of my mother with all her feelings of hope, happiness but fears and anxieties as well.

Now comes the challenging part for me – to unravel all of that and put them to rest. I need to to do that to find myself and my own life.