My mom is dying.
Is there a right way to die?
There seems to be… right?
In the US, the right way to die is to spend every moment squeezing meaning out of your remaining minutes. It is to find closure with loved ones. To brace the hard truth with honesty.
I can’t help thinking about Lulu Wang’s The Farewell. How prescient that would prove to be. No one else is supposed to know. Especially other family members or friends. Not even her sisters.
My dad also doesn’t want my mom to confront the truth until it’s too late—until the doctors tell us exactly how many months she has left. He has been hiding bad medical news from her, while my brother and I shift uncomfortably.
Our oncologist is Chinese, too. We have no prognosis. Is this normal?
My mom doesn’t want to think about death. Or at least she doesn’t talk to us about it. She spends her time watching Chinese dramas, curled up uncomfortably on our living room couch.
I Google “how to spend time with a terminally ill person.” WebMD tells me to look through photo albums, to shed tears together, to reminisce and create intimacy.
The only intimacy my family knows how to create is by playing cards (三先) together. I have not seen my father or brother shed a tear since her diagnosis. I often feel incapable of crying. My mom seems only mildly curious by any old memories or photos I bring up.
Some days, the only quality time I spend with her is reading a Chinese version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone together, stumbling over four-character mandarin expressions I have never heard of.
Is this what it means to be American in a Chinese family? I can’t help but imagine how I would want to go. I would want to have honest, probing conversations. To try and confront the terror of death with as much courage as I can muster.
Who is to say she isn’t doing this? My mother is stronger than I know. I just don’t know what dying looks like to her.
Is there a Chinese way to die? Is there an American way to die?
Is there a right way to die?
All I know is that, day by day, my mom is dying.