i'm lost in translation

More memories

I knew my mother was going to die the day she told me she was sick. I was coming in from a night out in the city and she stopped me on the way to my room. “I went to the hospital today” she whispered. She didn’t want my grandmother to hear, which I found odd because my grandmother is hard of hearing and knows very little English. “They told me I have Cancer. Don’t worry, the doctor said I have to get this surgery and I’ll be okay.” I stood there looking at her and wondered when she suddenly became an optimistic person. I stood there in my black furry coat clutching a Gucci bag I had just received as a Christmas present and I wanted to scream at her. It all rushed through my head and I knew if I opened my mouth it would all fall right out. Why didn’t you go earlier Why did you wait so long when something was obviously wrong Why didn’t you take care of yourself What am I going to do?

I must have cried a little because my mom stayed up for a little while with me and we talked about random things. We talked about the bakery she worked at. How much she thought she made it better and how they wouldn’t do well without her. This thinking is most likely the reason she felt it necessary to work there every day for 12 to 14 hours. We talked about her current relationship. She told me that he had asked her to marry him – but she refused. She said he was strange, that he smoked too much and he didn’t know how to run his business. I asked her if she loved him. And then she got up to go to bed.

In January – she want in for a hysterectomy. But she thought that she still may want some children with Steve, the current relationship, so she didn’t get everything fully removed. She wanted to still bear children. About two days after she was recovering – my grandmother called me in a panic. My mother went on deliveries for the bakery. The new driver didn’t know where he was going so they picked up my mother to help them out. She felt some strange obligation to that bakery – she was in so much pain but she still got in that truck. I stopped by there later that day to confront the owner, a former lover of my mother, and tell him off. He brushed me off and said she was going to be fine. He also leered at my cleavage and made some kind of sexist remark.

I really hope that little shit felt some kind of pang of regret when he heard that my mother died.

Of course neither one of her lovers, past or present, made an effort to show up at her funeral.

posted by Jin @ 5:38 PM