Born in the year of the tiger, my grandma is a ‘tiger’ woman. In Chinese culture, it means she is a born leader, strong-willed and independent. The downside is that she is fiery, short-tempered, and incredibly stubborn. Yet these qualities enabled her to raise four children in a poor village in China. When the family immigrated to Canada, these qualities helped her raise her grandchildren too. She is the epitome of a hardworking woman, one that would do everything herself even if it means doing it the hard way. My family believes the fierce tiger in her gave her the immense strength and determination to provide the utmost care to the ones she loves.
In her prime, my grandma spent all her time, energy, and money on our family. She woke up at 5AM to begin her responsibilities from cooking to cleaning to caring for the children. She tended a full-fledged backyard farm and grew peppers, melons, and other vegetables. Even when she felt under the weather, she always fulfilled her duties as a homemaker and caregiver. She gave all she could to the family, expressing her love language through acts of service.
“Go get whatever you want,” she offered every time we went to the Chinese supermarket.
“Okay, thanks grandma,” my little sister Kelly and I exclaimed and went to grab Doraemon candies, cream-filled wafers, and purple dragon fruit.
The candies rotted our teeth, but she never denied us the pleasure, she just took us to the dentist for cavity fillings and feigned innocence when my parents found out about the sweets.
She was funny like that, never admitting when she did something wrong. Apologies weren’t said in our household, they were signaled with offers of food. For grandma, she would cut up fruits and serve them like a truce agreement.
“Eat it all,” grandma would say and then walk away.
As a 10-year-old, I ate not knowing I was devouring a symbolic signage of forgiveness.
As she aged, my grandma’s children and grandchildren reduced her daily flow of tasks and started looking after her, but she was incredibly resistant. To her, it felt like early retirement, surrendering a torch that she wasn’t ready to pass. The adults said she was stubborn, but I think that she didn’t want to feel useless and face her mortality. Despite increasing health problems, she remained self-sufficient, and the family helped in ways she allowed like driving her to the store.
Hospitalized with Covid-19, her capabilities and mobility plunged resulting in the need for full-time care. An accelerated nursing home application led to the spot at Yee Hong Long Term Care Home.
Initially, my grandma refused to go. To her, it was only yesterday when she was capable of taking care of the entire family when in fact, years have passed. She didn’t want to surrender control of her life, to be observed and nursed by care workers. Perhaps her onset of dementia made it difficult to comprehend the situation but with reluctance, she moved into the Yee Hong Center. She was determined to return home when her health improved. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth.
The Yee Hong Center is a maroon-bricked building accented with pastel teal rooftops and window frames. The interior is bright and spacious with a home-like atmosphere. My family hoped that the Cantonese-speaking staff and curated cultural activities would engage my grandma but she declined participation and confined herself to her room.
It has become my routine to visit her weekly. I often find her lying diagonally on her bed with her feet dangling off the side because she feels too weak to shimmy herself into the middle. Her jade bracelets jangle as she pushes her excessive eyelid skin up to open her eyes. Even though she can still see, she blindly assumes I am a nurse until I remind her I’m her granddaughter, Zi Shan.
“Oh, Zi Shan, listen, I want to go home. Please teach me to use the microwave or let me use the stove. I can take care of myself,” she pleas loudly.
“Grandma, no one can watch you at home and you leave the stove on,” I nearly shout because of her hearing loss
“No, Zi Shan, listen. It only happened twice,” she holds up two fingers.
“It happens lots of times, you just forget.”
“No way, no,” she shakes her head. “I won’t forget this time.”
“Grandma, people take care of you here. There are doctors and nurses here–”
“The doctor is never here, Zi Shan. I asked for the doctor, and they said he only comes in every two weeks. Isn’t that crazy? How can I ever get better?”
“The doctor has lots of patients so he’s busy,” I say.
“Two weeks,” she says, holding up two fingers for emphasis. “How can I ever get better when there’s no doctor here. Let me tell you, Zi Shan, the herbal doctor said he can heal me…” and she goes off on a tangent.
Her cognitive decline makes it hard for her to focus on a subject, leading to her monologuing her stream of thoughts. Mostly, it’s about missing her family, wanting to go home, and her health problems. She stresses about her incontinence, dizziness, and bodily weakness but doesn’t understand that these are age-related problems. She is adamant that being 84 years old doesn’t mean she is a senior. Convinced she is ill, she clings to the hope that she will recover and return home.
Oftentimes, she suffers from memory loss and disorientation. The worst part is that she sometimes doesn’t recognize me no matter how much I try to jog her memory.
“Grandma, I am Zi Shan, your granddaughter. Do you remember?”
“Zi Shan? No, aren’t you Fong?”
“No, I am your granddaughter,” I say, squeezing her hands.
“You’re Fong, you think I don’t remember?” she dismisses.
I press on, “grandma, I am Zi Shan. You raised me, remember?”
“You’re Fong,” she says annoyed. “Wait, Fong, I need you to do something for me.”
I was dejected. No matter how much I tried to convince her I was her granddaughter Zi Shan, she couldn’t grasp that information.
“Listen, I am your granddaughter, Zi Shan, okay?”
“Oh, sure, you’re Zi Shan? Okay, can you help me buy something?”
“Do you really remember me?”
“Yes,” she lies, “can you buy me Voltaren and Tiger Balm?”
“Grandma, who is my father?”
“Ugh, I don’t know. Can you just buy me Voltaren and the oil?”
I rolled my eyes, “fine,” and I wrote down a list of her demands.
“Okay, I need Voltaren, 999 ointment, Tiger Balm… um… nasal gel…”
I obliged and restocked whatever she needed as it was also a part of my routine. Unfortunately, her forgetting me was becoming routine too. She didn’t remember I was Zi Shan, but she remembered my name and used it to address my uncles or aunts. I longed for the times when she truly knew who I was but when she does, I am always skeptical.
“Aiyah, Zi Shan, my kind granddaughter… I forgot you last time because my memory is bad. I’m so useless,” she knocks on her forehead with her fist. “I couldn’t remember my kind granddaughter–”
“It’s okay,” I put her hands in mine. “Do you actually remember me?”
“I’m old now, I have no brain. I can’t even remember anything,” she says.
“It’s okay, grandma. But you remember me now, right? Who am I?”
“Zi Shan, my kind granddaughter, I remember.”
I hand her the requested oils and creams and the steamed yams I prepared for her.
“Eat it all,” I say.
“Oh! Zi Shan, take that food home,” she points to her dresser drawer where I discovered some bananas, cookies, and juice boxes.
“Grandma, why don’t you eat them?” I ask.
“I don’t eat that stuff. It’s for you,” she says happily. Even now, she tried to express her love by giving me food. In the same way, I try to express my love to her by buying her whatever she wants and bringing her food, mimicking the way she took care of me as a child. In return, I just prayed she won’t forget me.
“Zi Shan, listen, I want to go home. I miss you and I’m worried about you guys.”
“Grandma, you don’t need to worry, everyone is okay,” I assured her.
“My life is so hard, Zi Shan, I have no brain. I didn’t remember you. The nurse said, ‘that’s your granddaughter!’ and I didn’t even know…”
I nod but she isn’t asking for a response, she is just expressing everything on her mind as usual. I sit beside her and lay my head on her shoulder, basking in her remembering me which is becoming a rare occurrence.
Although my heart aches whenever I see her, I didn’t want to stop visiting. Some of her children and grandchildren can’t bear to see her at the nursing home so they rarely visit but I know that one hour of dejection was nothing compared to being in her confinement.
I appreciate Yee Hong Centre for providing nursing care as my grandma’s health and cognitive abilities decline but I know she is still suffering. My grandma who cared for all her children and grandchildren is now left in a state of loneliness and abandonment. She was once in charge of the household but now has no control and agency over her condition. Even with immense strength, what is the ‘tiger’ woman supposed to do within the walls of the nursing home, growing older, weaker, and left behind by the clan.