The Spotlight is on My Father

I’ve hit a snag on day 6 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Instead of getting down to business and writing, I started to delete my media library. One thing led to another. I couldn’t stop until it was emptied except for a few favourites. So I’m trying to stay calm and not scramble to find a few words. My advice to myself is stay with the program. Make it simple. Make it easy.

I’m taking Paul Taubman, our digital maestro’s idea of spotlighting a person in my life. So the spotlight is on my father. I took him out for coffee this afternoon. Since my mother passed in October, I’ve been trying to spend more time with him. It’s the first time he’s ever been alone. It’s a hard task at 93 years old. He had a few rough spells in the beginning, requiring a hospitalization. Now, it’s a few doctor’s visits once in awhile.

He’s doing remarkably well. He still lives in his own house and cooks for himself. We help him with groceries, housework and snow shovelling. We visit, take him on outings and meals sometimes. He plays Majong on his iPad, reads Chinese books I get from the library. He dresses and bathes himself. Uses cane/walker. He gets lonely for mom, of course. When he gets down, I remind him how remarkable he is, that he’s doing all these things. I remind him, too, that he is continent of everything, not peeing or pooping his pants. He laughs and things pass.

Thursday (#NaBloPoMo)

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.