San’s family journal

Yesterday i went back to attend my father passaway anniversary. It is just plain amazing to think how fast time flies as it has been one year since father passed away. During the year… nothing much has changed on my side but i guess it was totally different on mother’s side. However, mother was really a strong woman as she has been on her own eversince. I really thank God for taking care of her especially she has to go to the kopitiam early in the morning alone.

Mother is going to write a will as she experience the difficult to inherit father’s assets after he passed away without writing a will. Then she worries about how we brothers are going to deal they assets if she passed away. Well… i told her, why do you worry? Life is just too tiring if one has to worry about things about death…

MIL suffered a minor heart attach yesterday due to lack of salt in the blood as she vomits most of the time after she has some intake of fluid or flood. She has been hospitalized for almost 2 weeks and we finally know the cause of her sickness. She has serious bacteria infections which started from the stomach and then moved to the chest. The treatment course ends tomorrow and we really hope that there will be no further complication so that she can be discharged tomorrow.

Finally, mother-in-law (MIL) is here in Hospital Kuala Lumpur. So, basically i have transferred the “problem” from Butterworth to KL after traveling for live 2000 km over the last two weekends. Since MIL is still in the hospital due to lung infection which we just found out yesterday night, she will be staying in the wad for next couple of days. That means she needs somebody to take care of her during the night and we have a hard time to get somebody to attend to her during the night. However, this is the anticipated problem since we decided to move her down from Hospital in Butterworth.

tomorrow i will be traveling to Butterworth again and hopefully this time will be able to send my mother-in-law down to KL. The problem is that she is still in the Hospital and if she is not be able to make it out of the hospital by Sunday, then i have to make another trip the coming week. To add salt to the wound, the petrol price just increase 41% today… isn’t it great?

I went back to Butterworth on last Friday in order to pick up my mother-in-law and send her back to KL her son’s place. She has not been feeling well and eating well for the last 2 weeks and was advice by clinic doctor to be admitted to hospital but she refused. Then we thought since she refused to be admitted, may be it would be easier for us to take care of her if we bring her back to KL.

I reached there at about 4 pm and I was tired and decided to take a nap. At about 5:30 pm, my father-in-law woke me up and said that we have to sent mother-in-law to the hospital, as she was really ill at that moment. So we sent her to the general hospital and now that I am writing this, she is still in the hospital. So, practically, I was there all the way 350km from KL just to send her to the clinic to be admitted and then come back on yesterday night to plan for another trip to fetch her down to KL. Interesting huh!?

So, as usual, there were a lot of finger pointing on how mother got ill at the first place. In my opinion, the whole chained events thing started when she insisted she wanted to go back to Butterworth, where her house was located in order to check on her stuff. Everybody in KL was advising her to not go back to Butterworth as there will be nobody that can take proper care of her. But she refused and said that she couldn’t sleep well if it is not in her own house and also without checking her stuff.

Because of she was not eating well and well taken care of since she resides in Butterworth, her health condition deteriorated and still refused to go to her son’s house even after couldn’t eat for 2 weeks. It is rather illogical to think of her reasoning, as she didn’t want to trouble her son and daughter-in-law and now, look at what has happened. The trouble is even more. I can’t help but to wander is this is natural process of growing old? Will I be so obsessed with my possessions and refuse to see what is best for my family? I just hope that Grace will not be troubled too much by use when we become old.

For the last 5 days I had been driving for about 1500 km all the way north to Butterworth then down to Lumut then back to Butterworth and lastly back to Serdang. Ah… there is no place like home.

My parents-in-law are in Butterworth and we took the opportunity to visit them during Labor Day after my mother-in-law insisted that she would like to go back to her home two months ago. She sold her old 2-storey house which she had been staying for live forever about half a year ago and now she is staying in single storey 3 bedrooms terrace house with her husband. So virtually almost all her old stuff has to fit in a room in the new house and I was somehow tasked to rearrange that stuff so that more stuff could go in and make the old ones retrievable. It was a daunting task indeed. During the process, I discovered a lot of really useless stuff like old plastic cookie jugs and ice-cream boxes etc. I also found a lot of old new clothes that she had been keeping for ages. Half way through the process in a cramped warm stuffy room, it was about 2.5 hours later to be precise, I started to wander whether I will be here again to empty this room after mother-in-law pass away and her sons decide to sell the house?

Two nights before we left for Serdang, I learned that mother-in-law was not able to reach the toilet chair fast enough to pass urine and wetted herself. Yen told me about the incident and I did an analysis on the process of how mother-in-law goes to toilet during the night. I found out that she has to sit up on her bed and slowly move to the side of the bed and then move on to the wheelchair and roll her way to the toiler chair then transfer herself onto the chair. I guess you also find it sounds very long huh? Well, I suggested to her to move her toilet chair to her bedside so that she can transfer herself onto the chair without going through the wheel chair process but you guess what? My suggestion got overruled by a simply excuse that she is not used to it. What the… !!! Well, last night, she wetted herself again…

Looking at those old couple, I just cannot comprehend how complicated their lives are. I really hope that I can grow old gracefully and will not burden Grace and her husband too much by clinging to my usual style of living.

Yen’s mother is doing quite well for the last 2 days that we have spent with her. I guess she is probably going well in the recovering process as she said that she can move her leg with less effort nowadays. Hopefully after the wound recovers, she will be able to move more freely by her own.

I would say that she is doing quite well on the physical side, but the spiritual side is rather disappointing. Yen had spent quite an amount of time on relieving her mother from grudges that she bears over her husband, her disability and other incidents. She is still blaming God on things that are not according to her will. I guess that is something that requires divine intervention and basically Yen is powerless in handling it.

Come to think about it, mother-in-law now is already 73 and still possessive about the belongings that she could not carried with her from the old house that was sold last 2 months. She was planning to extent the other house to keep her stuff from the sold house. Somehow the plan was rejected by her sons as they think that will be a waste of money and she might as well enjoy her life with whatever money left from selling of the old house.

It is not like she would be able to carry any stuff with her when breathes out her last breath and yet she is still thinking of preserving her belongings. Is this normal? Will I be on the same boat as hers when I grow old?

Mother-in-law has returned to her son’s house on yesterday afternoon. The operation was a success in term of removing the steel bracket on the hip.

She was fine after the operation but starting to feel dizzy and vomit since Wednesday, a day after the operation. The cause is believed to be the irregularity of blood sugar and it might take some time for the blood sugar to stabilize as she is a diabetic. At any rate, we would not be able to tell whether removing the steel bracket would help to improve the quality of her life until the wound actually heals up.

It will be a disappointment if nothing changes.

Before my parents engaged with the traditional kopitiam business, my mother used to attend church and serve in the church as an interceder to pray for others especially on behalf of their illnesses.

I went back to Klang last weekend and we attended the service together with my mother and after the service, my mum told me that we have to wait for her, as she would be serving others after the service. Well… I am glad that mother would be able to go back to the spiritual lifestyle that she used to have.

I don’t really sure how all this change that come about and caused mother ceased to attend church before my father passed away. Anyhow, over the years, mother still keep her faith that under all odds she still trust the lord and not she is back in business again. That is something really wonderful and it makes me think how graceful is our Lord.

It inevitably makes me thing that what will be like for me for years to come.

Mother-in-law finally has decided to go for another operation to take out the metal frame in her left tight. It is scheduled on 12/12/07. I do hope that after the operation she will have a more comfortable life without the constant pain near the pelvis.

With that I also hope that in future Yen can travel less frequent to visit her mother since she need all the time she can get to finish off her DBA program. Well… that remains as a wish however…